A plea for the West

LI B R.AFLY
OF THL

UNIVERSITY

or ILLI NOIS

cop

.*5

HIST. SURVEY

DR. BEECHER'S

PLEA FOR THE WEST.

PLEA FOR THE WEST.

BY LYMAN BEECHER, D. D.

Second Edition.

CINCINNATI :
PUBLISHED BY TRUMAN & SMITH

NEW- YORK :

LEAVITT, LORD & CO.
1835.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835,

BY TRUMAN & SMITH,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Ohio.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE within is a discourse recently delivered by
the writer in several of the Atlantic cities, while
on an agency for the Cincinnati Lane Seminary.
Those who heard it will perceive that it is as it
was delivered, with a little enlargement on a few
points which demand a more ample illustration.
Cincinnati, 1835.

1*

A PLEA FOR THE WEST.

Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such
things 1 Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day!
or shall a nation be born at once 1 for as soon as Zion tra-
vailed, she brought forth her children.— ISAIAH Ixvi, 8.

EVER since the era of modern mis-
sions, sceptical men have ridiculed the
efforts of the church to evangelize the
world, and predicted their failure.
" What," say they, " do these Jews
build 7 — if a fox do but go up upon the
wall, it will fall. The world can never
be converted to Christianity by the
power of man." And full well do we
know it, and most deeply do we feel
it, and in all our supplications for aid,

8 DR. BEECHER'S

most emphatically do we confess our
utter impotency ; and could no power
but the power of man be enlisted, it
would be indeed of all experiments the
most ridiculous and hopeless. But be-
cause man cannot convert the world to
Christianity, cannot God do it ? Has he
not promised to do it, and selected his
instruments, and commanded his people
to be fellow workers with him 7 And
hath he said, and shall he not do it 1

Instead of its being a work of diffi-
culty and dilatory movement, when the
time to favor Zion comes, it shall outrun
all past analogies of moral causes, as if
seed-time and harvest should meet on
the same field, or a nation should in-
stantly rush up from barbarism to civi-
lization.

But as all great eras of prosperity to
the church have been aided by the civil
condition of the world, and accomplished
by the regular operation of moral causes,

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 9

I consider the text as a prediction of the
rapid and universal extension of civil
and religious liberty, introductory to
the triumphs of universal Christianity.
It is certain that the glorious things
spoken of the church and of the world,
as affected by her prosperity, cannot
come to pass under the existing civil
organization of the nations. Such a
state of society as is predicted to per-
vade the earth, cannot exist under an
arbitrary despotism, and the predomi-
nance of feudal institutions and usa-
ges. Of course, it is predicted that
revolutions and distress of nations will
precede the introduction of the peace-
ful reign of Jesus Christ on the earth.
The mountains shall be cast down, and
the valleys shall be exalted — and he
shall " overturn, and overturn, and over-
turn, till he whose right it is, shall
reign King of nations — King of saints."
It was the opinion of Edwards, that

10 DR. BEECHER'S

the millenium would commence in
America. When I first encountered
this opinion, I thought it chimerical ;
but all providential developments since,
and all the existing signs of the times,
lend corroboration to it. But if it is by
the march of revolution and civil liber-
ty, that the way of the Lord is to be
prepared, wrhere shall the central
energy be found, and from what nation
shall the renovating power go forth 1
What nation is blessed with such ex-
perimental knowledge of free institu-
tions, with such facilities and resources
of communication, obstructed by so few
obstacles, as our own ? There is not
a nation upon earth which, in fifty
years, can by all possible reformation
place itself in circumstances so favora-
ble as our own for the free, unembarras-
sed applications of physical effort and
pecuniary and moral power to evange-
lize the world.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 11

But if this nation is, in the provi-
dence of God, destined to lead the way
in the moral and political emancipation
of the world, it is time she understood
her high calling, and were harnessed
for the work. For mighty causes, like
floods from distant mountains, are rush-
ing with accumulating power, to their
consummation of good or evil, and soon
our character and destiny will be ste-
reotyped forever.

It is equally plain that the religious
and political destiny of our nation is to
be decided in the West. There is the
territory, and there soon will be the
population, the wealth, and the politi-
cal power. The Atlantic commerce
and manufactures may confer always
some peculiar advantages on the East.
But the West is destined to be the great
central power of the nation, and under
heaven, must affect powerfully the

12 DR. BEECHER'S

cause of free institutions and the liberty
of the world.

The West is a young empire of
mind, and power, and wealth, and free
institutions, rushing up to a giant man-
hood, with a rapidity and a power never
before witnessed below the sun. And
if she carries with her the elements of
her preservation, the experiment will be
glorious — the joy of the nation — the
joy of the whole earth, as she rises in
the majesty of her intelligence and be-
nevolence, and enterprise, for the eman-
cipation of the world.

It is equally clear, that the conflict
which is to decide the destiny of the
West, will be a conflict of institutions
for the education of her sons, for pur-
poses of superstition, or evangelical
light ; of despotism, or liberty.

I propose to consider in this dis-
course—-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 13

I. What is required to secure the
civil and religious prosperity of the
West.

II. By whom it must be done.

III. How it must be done. And

IV. The motive to do it.

1. The thing required for the civil
and religious prosperity of the West, is
universal education, and moral culture,
by institutions commensurate to that
result — the all-pervading influence of
schools, and colleges, and seminaries,
and pastors, and churches. When the
West is well supplied in this respect,
though there may be great relative de-
fects, there will be, as we believe, the
stamina and the vitality of a perpetual
civil and religious prosperity.

2. By whom shall the work of rearing
the literary and religious institutions of
the West be done 7

Not by the West alone.
The West is able to do this great work
2

14 DR. BEECHER'S

for herself,— and would do it, provided
the exigencies of her condition allowed
to her the requisite time. The subject of
education is no where more appreciated ;
and no people in the same time ever
performed so great a work as has alrea-
dy been performed in the West. Such
an extent of forest never fell before the
arm of man in forty years, and gave
place, as by enchantment, to such an
empire of cities, and towns, and villages?
and agriculture, and merchandise, and
manufactures, and roads, and rapid navi-
gation, and schools, and colleges, and
libraries, and literary enterprise, with
such a number of pastors and churches,
and such a relative amount of religious
influence, as has been produced by the
spontaneous effort of the religious de-
nominations of the West. The later
peopled states of New-England did by
no means come as rapidly to the same
state of relative, intellectual and moral

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 15

culture as many portions of the West
have already arrived at, in the short
period of forty, thirty, and even twenty
years.

But this work of self-supply is not
completed, and by no human possibility
could have been completed by the West,
in her past condition.

No people ever did, in the first gene-
ration, fell the forest, and construct the
roads, and rear the dwellings and public
edifices, and provide the competent sup-
ply of schools and literary institutions.
New-England did not. Her colleges
were endowed extensively by foreign
munificence, and her churches of the
first generation were supplied chiefly
from the mother country ; — and yet the
colonists, of New-England were few in
number, compact in territory, homoge-
neous in origin, language, manners, and
doctrines ; and were coerced to unity
by common perils and necessities ; and

16 DR. BEECHER'S

could be acted upon by immediate legis-
lation; and could wait also for their
institutions to grow with their growth
and strengthen with their strength. But
the population of the great West is not
so, but is assembled from all the states
of the Union, and from all the nations
of Europe, and is rushing in like the wa-
ters of the flood, demanding for its moral
preservation the immediate and univer-
sal action of those institutions which
discipline the mind, and arm the con-
science and the heart. And so various
are the opinions and habits, and so re-
cent and imperfect is the acquaintance,
and so sparse are the settlements of the
West, that no homogeneous public sen-
timent can be formed to legislate imme-
diately into being the requisite institu-
tions. And yet they are all needed im-
mediately, in their utmost perfection and
power. A nation is being " born in a
day," and all the nurture of schools and

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 17

literary institutions is needed, constantly
and universally, to rear it up to a glori-
ous and unperverted manhood.

It is no implication of the West, that
in a single generation, she has not com-
pleted this work. In the circumstances
of her condition she could not do it ; and
had it been done, we should believe that
a miraculous, and not a human power
had done it.

Who then, shall co-operate with our
brethren of the West, for the consumma-
tion of this work so auspiciously begun ?
Shall the South be invoked ? The South
have difficulties of their own to encoun-
ter, and cannot do it ; and the middle
states have too much of the same Work
yet to do, to volunteer their aid abroad.

Whence, then, shall the aid come,
but from those portions of the Union
where the work of rearing these institu-
tions has been most nearly accomplish-
ed, and their blessings most eminently
2*

18 DR. BEECHER'S

enjoyed 1 And by whom, but by those
who in their infancy were aided ; and
who, having freely received, are now
called upon freely to give, and who, by
a hard soil and habits of industry and
economy, and by experience are quali-
fied to endure hardness as good soldiers
and pioneers in this great work 7 And
be assured that those who go to the
West with unostentatious benevolence,
to identify themselves with the people
and interests of that vast community,
will be adopted with a warm heart and
an unwavering right hand of fellowship.

But how shall this aid be extended
to our brethren of the West in the man-
ner most acceptable and efficacious 1

Not by prayers and supplications
omy, nor by charities alone, nor by colo-
nial emigrations ; for these, though they
might cultivate their own garden, would
for obvious reasons be fenced in, and
exert but a feeble general influence be-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. liJ

yond their own inclosures. Those who
go out to do good at the West should go
out to mingle with the people of the
West, and be absorbed in their multi-
tude, as rain drops fall on the bosom of
the ocean and mingle with that world
of waters.*

* I am happy, since my return, to find myself so
ably sustained in this opinion by my friend Judge
Hall, late of Illinois, whose long residence at the
West, and extensive opportunities for observation,
entitle his opinions on this subject to great respect.
In the Illinois Monthly onjf831, speaking of emigra-
tion, he says : —

" We have heard lately of several colonies which
have been formed in the eastern states, for the pur-
pose of emigrating to Illinois ; and we always hear
such information with regret. Not that we have any
objection to emigration in itself; on the contrary,
few have done more than we, to encpurage and pro-
mote it. We ardently long to see the fertile plains
of Illinois covered with an industrious, an enterpri-
sing, and an intelligent population ; we shall always
be among the first to welcome the farmer, the me-
chanic, the school teacher — the working man, in
short, of any trade, mystery, or profession — and we

20 DR. BEECHER'S

Nor is it by tracts, or Bibles, or
itinerating missions, that the requisite
intellectual and moral power can be
applied. There must be permanent,
powerful, literary and moral institutions,
which, like the great orbs of attraction
and light, shall send forth at once their
power and their illumination, and with-
out them all else will be inconstant
and ephemeral.* Let it not, however,

care not from what point of the compass he may
come ; but wish to see them come to Illinois, with a
manly confidence in us, and 'with the feelings, not of
New-Englanders, or Pennsylvanians, but of Ameri-
cans."

* In confirmation of these views, it gives me
pleasure to refer again to Judge Hall, in his warm
hearted eulogy on the friends of the Redeemer in an
eastern state, for their benevolent enterprise and
munificence in aiding in the establishment of female
schools and Sabbath schools in the state of Illinois.
It is contained in a letter to the editor of the Sab-
bath School Treasury of 1831.

" I am happy to say to you, that the persons who

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 21

for a moment be supposed, that the
schools of the West are to be sustained

have been induced by your representations to re-
move to Illinois, are generally well pleased, and are
doing well. The best schools that we have now in
Illinois, are those established by the young ladies
who came out for that purpose. The school at Ed-
wardsville, conducted by two young ladies, is very
popular, and deservedly so. The Vandalia school
commenced with five scholars, a month ago, and has
now thirty -two, which, for a female school in this

quarter, is quite encouraging. Miss L is doing

very well, and is said to be very useful at Carrollton.

Miss S has gone to Hillsborough, to keep an

infant school. There will be several other female
schools established shortly.

" We owe a debt of gratitude to the friends of the
Redeemer in Massachusetts, for their great liberality
in providing us with Sabbath school books, which
we shall not for many years be able to repay. The
day will assuredly come, however, when the doings
of the present generation of Christians will be looked
back to with feelings of admiration and gratitude,
and when Illinois will remember Massachusetts as a
benefactor. ' He is ever merciful and lendeth,' is
the language used in Scripture to describe a good

22 DR. BEECHER'S

by the emigration of an army of instruc-
tors from the East. For though for the
present necessity, the aid of qualified in-

man; and surely if .the lending, or giving, our
money or goods to another is praiseworthy, it is still
more so to bestow intellectual riches, and the means
of Christian instruction. For my part, I feel grate-
ful, and am glad to have the opportunity of saying
so to you.

" Multitudes have assented to the proposition, that
Sabbath schools are among the most efficient means
of grace ; and other multitudes recognize in them
valuable instruments for the dissemination of know-
ledge and morality — but we are totally destitute of
the facilities for setting such persons in motion. We
need, especially, TEACHERS and BOOKS. The latter I
consider as most imperiously and immediately requi-
site, because the former may, in some places, be
supplied, while for the books we must at all events
be indebted to you, or to other of the friends of hu-
manity. * * * We are also greatly in want of teach-
ers, and give to this part of your plan our cordial
approbation. Pious persons coming out with this
intention, and having callings to support them, need
be under no fear, if frugal and industrious, of doing
well."

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 23

structors is not to be repelled, but invi-
ted ; yet for any permanent reliance, it
is but a drop of the bucket to the ocean.

Nothing is more certain, than that
the great body of the teachers of the
West must be educated at the West. It
is by her own sons chiefly, that the great
work is to be consummated which her
civil, and literary, and religious prospe-
rity demands.

But how shall the requisite supply
of teachers for the sons and daughters
of the West be raised up 1 It can be
accomplished by the instrumentality of
a learned and pious ministry, educated
at the West.

Experience has evinced, that schools
and popular education, in their best
estate, go not far beyond the suburbs of
the city of God. All attempts to legis-
late prosperous colleges and schools into
being without the intervening influence
of religious education and moral prin-

24 DR. BEECHER'S

ciple, and habits of intellectual culture
which spring up in alliance with evan-
gelical institutions, have failed. Schools
wane, invariably, in those towns where
the evangelical ministry is neglected,
and the Sabbath is profaned, and the
tavern supplants the worship of God.
Thrift and knowledge in such places go
out, while vice and irreligion come in.

But the ministry is a central lumina-
ry in each sphere, and soon sends out
schools and seminaries as its satellites
by the hands of sons and daughters of
its own training. A land supplied with
able and faithful ministers, will of course
be filled with schools, academies, libra-
ries, colleges, and all the apparatus for
the perpetuity of republican institutions.
It always has been so — it always will be.

But the ministry for the West must
be educated at the West. The demands
on the East, for herself and for pagan
lands, forbid the East ever to supply our

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 25

wants. Nor is it necessary. For the
Spirit of God is with the churches of the
West, and pious and talented young
men are there in great numbers, willing,
desiring, impatient to consecrate them-
selves to the glorious work. If we pos-
sessed the accommodations and the
funds, we might easily send out a hun-
dred ministers a year — a thousand mi-
nisters in ten years — around each of
whom schools would arise, and instruc-
tors multiply, and churches spring up,
and revivals extend, and all the ele-
ments of civil and religious prosperity
abound.

But we have said that the ministry
for the West must be a learned and
talented ministry.

No opinion is more false and fatal
than that mediocrity of talent and learn-
ing will suffice for the West. That if ,a
minister is a good sort of a man, but
somehow does not seem to be popular,
3

26 DR. BEECHEfc'S

and find employment, he had better go
to the West. No ; let him stay at home ;
and if among the urgent demands for
ministerial labor here, he cannot find
employment, let him conclude that he
has mistaken his profession.

But let him not go to the West.
The men who, somehow, do not succeed
at the East, are the very men who
will succeed still less at the West. If
there be in the new settlements at the
West a lack of schools and educated
mind, there is no lack of shrewd and
vigorous mind ; and if they are not
deep read in Latin and Greek, they are
well read in men and things. On their
vast rivers, they go every where, and
see every body, and know every thing,
and judge with the tact of perspicacious
common sense. They are disciplined
to resolution and mental vigor by toils
and perils, and enterprises ; and often
they are called to attend as umpires to

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 27

the earnest discussions of their most
able and eloquent men, which cannot
fail to throw prosing dullness in the
ministry to a hopeless distance. No
where, if a minister is deficient, will
he be more sure to be " weighed in the
balance and found wanting." On the
contrary, there is not a place on earth
where piety, and talent, and learning,
and argument, and popular eloquence
are more highly appreciated, or re-
warded with a more frank and enthu-
siastic admiration. There are chords
in the heart of the West which vibrate
to the touch of genius, and to the power
of argumentative eloquence, with a
sensibility and enthusiasm no where
surpassed.* A hundred ministers of

* The following is an extract from a letter which
the author wrote to a friend of Professor Stowe,
more than a year before this sermon was prepared,
which shows his views at that time :

" All your reasoning in favor of Professor Stowe 's

28 DR. BEECHER'S

cultivated mind and popular eloquence
might find settlement in an hundred
places, and without the aid of missions,
and only to increase the demand for an
hundred more.

Most unquestionably the West de-
mands the instrumentality of the first
order of minds in the ministry, and
thoroughly furnished minds, to com-
mand attention, enlighten the under-
standing, form the conscience, and gain

better adaptation for New-England than for the
West is founded in a great and injurious mistake
concerning the character and condition of the
West. It is a mistake, that the talents and ac-
quirements of Mr. S. would not be as highly and as
justly appreciated here as in New-England. A full
proportion of the minds that are filling up the new
states of the West, are of the first order of intel-
lectual vigor, and often of taste and learning, and
intellectual action ; and a large portion of the peo-
ple who are not educated, are persons of shrewd
tnind, and quick discernment to perceive the empty
pretensions of men to learning and talents, and will
respond respectfully, yea, gladly, to the touch of

PLEA FOR THE WEST. £3

the heart, and bring into religious or-
ganization and order the uncommitted
mind and families of the great world ;
and many a man who might guide
respectfully a well-organized congrega-
tion here of homogeneous character,
and moving onward under the impetus
of long continued habits, might fail
utterly to call around him the popula-
tion of a new country.

Of course, the institutions which are
to lead in this great work of rearing the

real talent. But Ohio is not a frontier state, or
Cincinnati a new settlement, or the work demanded
here that of a pioneer. On the contrary, Cincin-
nati is as really a literary emporium as Boston, and
is rapidly rising to an honorable competition. In-
deed, at the present time, I firmly believe that
there is, according to the number of her inhabi-
tants, as much intellectual and literary activity here
as in Boston, constituting an atmosphere which he
would breathe with great pleasure, and in which
his literary attainments would not pass undiscovered
or unappreciated."

3*

30 DR. EEECHER'S

future ministry of the West should be
second to none in their endowments
and adaptation to this end. For it is
such a work in magnitude as human
instrumentality was never before con-
centrated upon. All other nations have
gone up slowly from semi-barbarism to
a civilized manhood, while our nation
was commenced with the best materi-
als of a nation at that time the most
favored nation in the world, and yet
was delayed in its growth, through two
centuries, by policy, and power, and
war, and taxation, and want of capital.
It is less than fifty years since our re-
sources have begun to be developed in
great power, and we have entered upon
the career of internal improvement and
national greatness ; and at the East,
until recently, these movements were
slow, as capital gradually increased,
and agriculture, and commerce, and
art led the way. But the West is fill-

PLEA FOR THE WEST.

31

ing up as by ocean waves ; and such is
her prospective greatness, that the
capital of the East and of Europe hold
competition for her acceptance and use,
so that in a day, she is rising up to the
high eminence that all other nations
have approached progressively through
the revolution of centuries.

But what will become of the West,
if her prosperity rushes up to such a
majesty of power, while those great
institutions linger which are necessary
to form the mind, and the conscience,
and the heart of that vast world. It
must not be permitted. And yet what
is done must be done quickly; for pop-
ulation will not wait, and commerce
will not cast anchor, and manufactures
will not shut off the steam nor shut
down the gate, and agriculture, pushed
by millions of freemen on their fertile
soil, will not withhold her corrupting
abundance.

We must educate ! We must edu-

32

cate ! or we must perish by our own
prosperity. If we do not, short from
the cradle to the grave will be our
race. If in our haste to be rich and
mighty, we outrun our literary and
religious institutions, they will never
overtake us ; or only come up after
the battle of liberty is fought and lost,
as spoils to grace the victory, and as
resources of inexorable despotism for
the perpetuity of our bondage. And
let no man at the East quiet himself,
and dream of liberty, whatever may
become of the West. Our alliance of
blood, and political institutions, and
common interests, is such, that we can-
not stand aloof in the hour of her cala-
mity, should it ever come. Her destiny
is our destiny ; and the day that her
gallant ship goes down, our little boat
sinks in the vortex ! .

It was to meet these exigences of
our common country in the West, that
the Lane Seminary was called into

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 33

being by the munificence of the sons of
the West ; first by a donation from the
two gentlemen whose name it bears,
followed by the gift of sixty acres of
land, on which the institution is located,
by Mr. Elnathan Kemper, and the sale
of fifty more at a reduced price and
long credit by the same benefactor ; to
which have been added fifteen thou-
sand dollars by the citizens of Cincin-
nati and the West, for the construction
of two college buildings and two pro-
fessors' houses. To this has been ad-
ded by our friends on this side of the
mountains, twenty thousand dollars
from one individual, for the endowment
of the professorship of Theology ; and
by others, thirty thousand, for the en-
dowment of the two professorships of
Biblical Literature and Ecclesiastical
History.

What we now need is a chapel for
the accommodation of students and a

34 DR. EEECHER'S

fast increasing community with a place
of worship ; the endowment of a pro-
fessorship of Sacred Rhetoric, and a
library. For the first, we have dared
to rely on our friends in Boston and its
vicinity. The library we hope to re-
ceive from our friends in New- York;
and for the Professorship of Sacred
Rhetoric we look up, hoping and be-
lieving that God will put into the
heart of one or more individuals to
endow it.

The motives which call on us to
co-operate immediately in this glorious
work of consummating the institutions
of the West, essential to the perpetuity
of her greatness and glory, are neither
few, nor feeble, nor obscure.

The territory is eight thousand miles
in circumference, extending from the
Alleghany to the Rocky mountains, and
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Lakes
of the North ; and it is the largest ter-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 35

ritory, and most beneficent in climate,
and soil, and mineral wealth, and com-
mercial facilities, ever prepared for the
habitation of man, and qualified to sus-
tain in prosperity and happiness the
densest population on the globe. By
twenty-four thousand miles of steam
navigation, and canals and rail roads,
a market is brought near to every man,
and the whole is brought into near
neighborhood.

When I first entered the West, its
vastness overpowered me with the im-
pression of its uncontrollable greatness,
in which all human effort must be lost.
But when I perceived the active inter-
course between the great cities, like the
rapid circulation of a giant's blood ; and
heard merchants speak of just stepping
up to Pittsburgh — only six hundred
miles — and back in a few days; and
others just from New-Orleans, or St.
Louis, or the Far West ; and others
going thither; and when I heard my

36 DR. BEECHER'S

ministerial brethren negotiating ex-
changes in the near neighborhood —
only one hundred miles up or down the
river — and going and returning on Sa-
turday and Monday, and without tres-
passing on the Sabbath; — then did I
perceive how God, who seeth the end
from the beginning, had prepared the
West to be mighty, and still wieldable,
that the moral energy of his word and
spirit might take it up as a very little
thing.

This vast territory is occupied now
by ten states and will soon be by twelve.
Forty years since it contained only
about one hundred and fifty thousand
souls ; while it now contains little short
of five millions. At the close of this
century, if no calamity intervenes, it
will contain, probably, one hundred
millions — a day which some of our
children may live to see; and when
fully peopled, may accommodate three
hundred millions. It is half as large as

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 37

all Europe, four times as large as the
Atlantic states, and twenty times as
large as New-England. Was there
ever such a spectacle — such a field in
which to plant the seeds of an immortal
harvest ! — so vast a ship, so richly laden
with the world's treasures and riches,
whose helm is offered to the guiding
influence of early forming institutions!
The certainty of success calls us to
immediate effort. If we knew not what
to do, if all was effort and expense in
untried experiments, there might he
some pretext for the paralysis of amaze-
ment and inaction. But we know what
to do : the means are obvious, and well
tried, and certain. The sun and the
rain of heaven are not more sure to call
forth a bounteous vegetation, than Bi-
bles, and Sabbaths, and schools, and
seminaries, are to diffuse intellectual
light and warmth for the bounteous
fruits of righteousness and peace. The
4

38 DR. BEECHER'S

corn and the acorn of the East are not
more sure to vegetate at the West than
the institutions which have blessed the
East are to bless the West .

But these all-pervading orbs of illu-
mination and centres of attraction must
be established. Such is the gravitating
tendency of society, that no spontaneous
effort at arms-length will hold it up.
It is by the constant energy and strong
attraction of powerful institutions only
that the needed intellectual and moral
power can be applied : and the present
is the age of founding them. If this
work be done, and well done, our coun-
try is safe, and the world's hope is secure.
The government of force will cease, and
that of intelligence and virtue will take
its place ; and nation after nation cheer-
ed by our example, will follow in our
footsteps, till the whole earth is free.
There is no danger that our agriculture
and arts will not prosper : the danger is,

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 39

that our intelligence and virtue will fal-
ter and fall back into a dark minded,
vicious populace — a poor, uneducated
reckless mass of infuriated animalism,
to rush on resistless as the tornado, or
to burn as if set on fire of hell.

Until Europe, by universal educa-
tion, is delivered from such masses of
feudal ignorance and servitude, she sits
upon a volcano, and despotism and revo-
lution will arbitrate her destiny.

Consider, too, how quickly and how
cheaply the guarantee of a perpetual
and boundless prosperity can be secur-
ed. The West needs but a momentary
aid, when almost as soon as received,
should it be needed, she will repay and
quadruple both principle and interest.
Lend a hand to get up her institutions,
to give ubiquity to her schools and Sab-
baths and sanctuaries, while her forests
are falling and her ocean floods of popu-
lation rolling in, and afterwards we will

40 DR. BEECHER'S

not come here to ask for aid ; for there
is a wealth and chivalrous munificence
there, which, when it has first perform-
ed the necessary work of self-preserva-
tion, will pour with you a noble tide of
rival benevolence into that river which
is " to make glad the city of our God."

All at the West, is on a great scale,
and the minds and the views of the peo-
ple correspond with these relative pro-
portions. Already, where churches are
formed, they give more liberally than
churches of the same relative condition
at the East ; and I have no doubt the
time is at the door, when the abundance
of her means and enterprise will take
the lead in those glorious enterprises
which are to emancipate the world.

It is not parsimony which renders
momentary aid necessary to the West :
it is want of time and of assimilation for
the consciousness and wielding of her
powers. And how cheaply can the aid

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 41

be rendered for rearing immediately
the first generation of her institutions 5
cheaper than we could rear the barracks
to accommodate an army for the de-
fence of our liberty, for, a single cam-
paign; cheaper than tire taxations of
crime and its punishment during the
same period, in the absence of literary
and evangelical influence.

Consider, also, that the miffhty re-
sources of the West are worse than
useless, without the supervening influ-
ence of the government of God.

To balance the temptation of such
unrivaled abundance, the capacity of
the West for self-destruction, without
religious and moral culture, will be as
terrific as her capacity for self-preserva-
tion, with it, will be glorious. But all
the moral energies of the government of
God over men, are indissolubly associa-
ted with " the ministry of reconcilia-
tion." The Sabbath, and the preaching
4*

42 DR. BEECHER'S

of the gospel, are Heaven's consecrated
instrumentality for the efficacious ad-
ministration of the government of mind
in a happy, social state. By these only
does the Sun of Righteousness arise with
healing in his beams ; and ignorance, and
vice, and superstition encamp around
evangelical institutions, to rush in when-
ever their light and power is extinct.

The great experiment is now making,
and from its extent and rapid filling up
is making in the West, whether the per-
petuity of our republican institutions
can be reconciled with universal suf-
frage. Without the education of the
head and heart of the nation, they can-
not be ; and the question to be decided
is, can the nation, or the vast balance
power of it be so imbued with intelli-
gence and virtue, as to bring out, in
laws and their administration, a perpe-
tual self-preserving energy ? We know
that the work is a vast one, and of great

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 43

difficulty ; and yet we believe it can be
done.

We know that we have reached an
appalling crisis ; that the work is vast
and difficult, and is accumulating upon
us beyond our sense of danger and deli-
berate efforts to meet it. It is a work
that no legislation alone can reach, and
nothing but an undivided, earnest, de-
cided public sentiment can achieve; and
that, too, not by anniversary resolutions
and fourth of July orations, but by well
systematized voluntary associations ;
counting the worth of our institutions,
the perils that surround them, and the
means and the cost of their preserva-
tion, and making up our minds to meet
the exigency.

I am aware that our ablest patriots
are looking out on the deep, vexed with
storms, with great forebodings and fail-
ings of heart for fear of the things that
are coming upon us ; and I perceive a

44 DR. BEECHER'S

spirit of impatience rising, and distrust
in respect to the perpetuity of our repub-
lic ; and I am sure that these fears are
well founded, and am glad that they
exist. It is the star of hope in our dark
horizon. Fear is what we need, as the
ship needs wind on a rocking sea, after
a storm, to prevent foundering. But
when our fear and our efforts shall cor-
respond with our danger, the danger is
past. For it is not the impossibility of
self-preservation which threatens us ;
nor is it the unwillingness of the nation
to pay the price of the preservation, as
she has paid the price of the purchase
of our liberties. It is inattention and
inconsideration, protracted till the cri-
sis is past, and the things which belong
to our peace are hid from our eyes.
And blessed be God, that the tokens of
a national waking up, the harbinger of
God's mercy, are multiplying upon us !
There is at the West an enthusias-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 45

tic feeling on the subject of education
and nothing has so inspired us with hope
as to witness the susceptibleness of the
East on the same subject, and the na-
tional fraternal benevolence with which
you are ready to put forth a helping
hand. We have been sad, but now we
are joyful. We see, we feel that East and
West, and North and South are waking
up upon the subject : a redeeming spirit
is rising which will save the nation. We
did not, in the darkest hour, believe that
God had brought our fathers to this
goodly land to lay the foundation of reli-
gious liberty, and wrought such wonders
in their preservation, and raised their
descendants to such heights of civil and
religious prosperity, only to reverse the
analogy of his providence, and abandon
his work, and though now there be clouds
and the sea roaring, and men's hearts
failing, we believe there is light behind
the cloud, and that the eminence of our

46 DR. BEECHER'S

danger is intended, under the guidance
of Heaven, to call forth and apply a
holy, fraternal fellowship between the
East and West, which shall secure our
preservation, and make the prosperity
of our nation durable as time, and as
abundant as the waves of the sea.

I would add, as a motive to immediate
action, that if we do fail in our great
experiment of self-government, our de-
struction will be as signal as the birth-
right abandoned, the mercies abused and
the provocation offered to beneficent
Heave.n. The descent of desolation will
correspond with the past elevation. No
punishments of Heaven are so severe
as those for mercies abused; and no in-
strumentality employed in their inflic-
tion is so dreadful as the wrath of man.
No spasms are like the spasms of expir-
ing liberty, and no wailings such as her
convulsions extort. It took Rome three
hundred years to die; and our death, if

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 47

we perish, will be as much more terrific
as our intelligence and free institutions
have given to us more bone, and sinew
and vitality. May God hide me from the
day when the dying agonies of my coun-
try shall begin ! O, thou beloved land
bound together by the ties of brother-
hood and common interest, and perils,
live forever — one and undivided !

But whatever we do, it must be done
quickly: for there is a tide in human
things which waits not, — moments on
which the destiny of a niticn balances,
when the light dust may turn the right
way or the wrong. And such is the con-
dition of our nation now. Mighty influ-
ences are bearing on us in high conflict,
for good or for evil, — for an immortality
of wo, or blessedness; and a slight
effort now may secure what ages of re-
pentance cannot recover when lost,
and soon the moment of our practical
preservation may have passed away.

48

We must educate the whole nation
while we may. All — all who would
vote must be enlightened, and reached
by the restraining and preserving ener-
gies of Heaven. The lanes and alleys
— the highways and hedges — the abodes
of filth and sordid poverty must be en-
tered, and the young immortals sought
out, and brought up to the light of intel-
lectual and moral daylight. This can
be done. God, if we are prompt and
willing, will give us the time. But if, in
this our day, we neglect the things that
belong to our peace, we shall find no
place for repentance, though we seek it
carefully and with tears.

But the vast amount of uneducated
population in our land already calls
upon us loudly to set about the work of
rearing every where the institutions
requisite for universal education.

According to the most accurate esti-
mation which can be obtained, there

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 49

are in the United States about a million
and a half of children without the means
of education, and about an equal number
, of adults, either foreigners or native
Americans, that are uneducated. These
large masses of unenlightened mind lie
in almost every portion of this nation,
and frightful statistics have been offi-
cially given by legislative investigation
in several of our states. In one of the
smaller eastern states there are nearly
thirty thousand adults and children that
cannot read or write. In one of the
largest there are four hundred thousand
adults and children who have had no in-
struction, and no means provided. In
one of the western states, one third of
all the children in the state are destitute
of any provision for education. These
are the states who have taken the lead in
making legislative investigation. Equal-
ly appalling developments await many
of the other states so soon as they have
5

50 DR. BEECHER'S

public spirit enough to take the same
method for information. Every where,
and in all ages, such masses of ignorance
are the material of all others most dan-
gerous to liberty ; for, as a general fact
uneducated mind is educated vice. But
the safety of our republic depends upon
the intelligence, and moral principle, and
patriotism, and property of the nation.
These, whatever topical inflamma-
tion may break out and push on to des-
perate measures, will by a common in-
stinct of self-preservation recoil when
the precipice appears, and will unite in
measures of common safety. But if in
this moment of recoil there be a popu-
lace behind, — a million of voters with-
out intelligence, or conscience, or patri-
otism, or property, and driven on by
demagogues to forbid recoil and push us
over, in a moment all may be lost. Haifa
million of unprincipled, reckless voters,
in the hands of demagogues, may, in

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 51

our balanced elections, overrule all the
property, and wisdom, and moral prin-
ciple of the nation.

This danger from uneducated mind
is augmenting daily by the rapid influx
of foreign emigrants, the greater part
unacquainted with our institutions, un-
accustomed to self-government, inac-
cessible to education, and easily acces-
sible to prepossession, and inveterate
credulity, and intrigue, and easily em-
bodied and wielded by sinister design.
In the beginning this eruption of revo-
lutionary Europe was not anticipated,
and we opened our doors wide to the
influx and naturalization of foreigners.
But it is becoming a terrific inundation ;
it has increased upon our native popu-
lation from five to thirty-seven per cent,
and is every year advancing. It seeks,
of course, to settle down upon the un-
occupied territory of the West, and may
at no distant day equal, and even out-

u. OF ILL ua

52 DR. BEECHER'S

number the native population. What
is to be done to educate the millions
which in twenty years Europe will
pour out upon us ?*

But what if this emigration, self-
moved and slow in the beginning, is
now rolling its broad tide at the bidding
of the powers of Europe hostile to free
institutions, and associated in holy alli-
ance to arrest and put them down ? Is
this a vain fear ? Are not the continen-
tal powers alarmed at the march of

* Our language precludes any reference in these
remarks to intelligent, virtuous, and industrious
emigrants ; nor do we fail to appreciate the many
high minded and valuable citizens among this class.
Neither are we- unmindful of the rapid advance of
internal improvements from the physical aid of the
poor. But the excellence and intelligence and value
of a portion, do not avert the danger to be appre-
hended from the ignorant and vicious ; and the good
derived from internal improvements can never be
an offset for the moral and political evils which
threaten our permanent prosperity and liberty.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 53

liberal opinions, and associated to put
them down ? and are they not, with the
sickness of hope deferred, waiting for

our downfall? It is the light of our

i „

republican prosperity, gleaming in upon
their dark prison house, which is inspi-
ring hope, and converting chains into
arms. It is the power of mind, roused
by our example from the sleep of ages
and the apathy of despair, which is send-
ing earthquake under the foundations of
their thrones ; and they have no hope
of rest and primeval darkness, but by
the extinction of our light. By fleets
and armies they cannot do it. But do
they, therefore, sleep on their heaving
earth and tottering thrones ? Has Met-
ternich yet to form an acquaintance
with history 1 Does he dream that
there is but one way to overturn repub-
lics, and that by the sword 1 Has he
yet to learn how Philip, by dividing her

54 DR. BEECHER'S

councils, conquered Greece 7 and how,
by intestine divisions, Rome fell 1

If the potentates of Europe have no
design upon our liberties, what means
the paying of the passage and emptying
out upon our shores such floods of pau-
per emigrants — the contents of the poor-
house and the sweepings of the streets ?
— multiplying tumults and violence, fill-
ing our prisons, and crowding our poor-
houses, and quadrupling our taxation,
and sending annually accumulating
thousands to the polls to lay their inex-
perienced hand upon the helm of our
power ? Does Metternich imagine that
there is no party spirit in our land,
whose feverish urgency would facilitate
their naturalization and hasten them to
the ballot box 7— and no demagogues,
who for a little brief authority, however
gained, would sell their country to
an everlasting bondage ? A foreign in-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 55

fluence acting efficaciously on the coun-
cils of a republic, has always been re-
garded and always proved itself to be
among the most fatal to liberty. But
in no form can it assume such power as
in the form of a consolidated mass of
alien voters, to balance in contested
elections the suffrages of the nation ;
rendering foreigners the most favored
and most courted people, and giving an
easy predominance to foreign influence
in our national councils. The wily po-
litician does not sleep over our prospe-
rity, or despair of our overthrow. But
he exults full of hope that we sleep
while he is sowing with broad cast
among us the elements of future strife,
and preparing our ruin by the only
means by which republics have ever
fallen.

It is the testimony of American tra-
velers, that the territorial, civil and ec-
clesiastical statistics of our country, and

56 DR. BEECHER'S

the action and bearing of political causes
upon our institutions, are more familiar
at Rome and Vienna, than with us ;
and that tracts and maps are in circu-
lation, explanatory of the capacious
West, and pointing out the most fertile
soils and most favored locations, and
inviting to emigration. These means
of a stimulated expatriation are corro-
borated by the copious and rapidly in-
creasing correspondence of those who
have already arrived, and the increas-
ing facilities of transportation.

But if, upon examination, it should
appear that three-fourths of the foreign
emigrants whose accumulating tide is
rolling in upon us, are, through the me-
dium of their religion and priesthood, as
entirely accessible to the control of
the potentates of Europe as if they
were an army of soldiers, enlisted and
officered, and sjpreading over the land ;
then, indeed, should we have just occa-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 57

sion to apprehend danger to our liberties.
It would be the union of church and
state in the midst of us. The church
and the state both in Europe, and the
pliant colonial church here. Her priest-
hood educated under the despotic
governments of Catholic Europe, and
dependent for their office, support and
honors upon a foreign temporal prince,
on whose sanction to their laws and
doings they are as dependent as the
colonies were upon George the Third,*
and this prince, too, elected by Austrian
influence and sustained by Austrian
bayonets, and of course subservient to
Austrian policy :| a priesthood not

* In the account of the last convocation or coun-
cil of the Catholic church in the United States, sent
to Europe, they say : " It was not thought proper to
publish its acts until they had been approved at
Rome, whither they had been sent. — Quarterly
Register, vol. 3, p. 96.

•f Lest the charge should seem gratuitous, of the
pope being the creature of Austria, it may be well

58 DR. BEECHER'S

elected by their people, or dependent
on them during good behavior, or
accountable to them for their deeds,
but dependent on a foreign jurisdiction,

to subjoin the language of an intelligent American
who was in Rome during the deliberations of the
conclave respecting the election of the present pon-
tiff. He says :

" It was interesting to hear the speculations of
the Italians on the probability of this or that cardi-
nal's election. Couriers were daily arriving from
the various despotic powers, and intrigues were rife
in the ante-chambers of the Quirinal palace ; now it
was said that Spain would carry her candidate, now
Italy, and now Austria, and when cardinal Capel-
lani was proclaimed pope, the universal cry, mixed
too with low-muttered curses, was, that Austria had
succeeded. The new pope had scarcely chosen
his title of Gregory XVI., and passed through the
ceremonies of coronation, before the revolution in
his states gave him the opportunity of calling in
Austria to take possession of the patrimony of St.
Peter, which his own troops could not keep for an
hour ; and at this moment Austrian soldiers hold
the Roman legions in subjection to the cabinet of
Vienna. Is not the pope a creature of Austria ?"

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 59

and to a great extent on foreign pa-
tronage. This would, indeed, be a
church and state union — another na-
tion within the nation — the Greek in
the midst of Troy.

The simple fact, that the clergy of
the Catholic denomination could wield
in mass the suffrage of their confiding
people, could not fail, in the competi-
tion of ambition and party spirit, to
occasion immediately an eager compe-
tition for their votes, placing them at
once in the attitude of the most favored
sect; securing the remission of duties
on imported church property, and copi-
ous appropriations of land for the en-
dowment of their institutions ; shielding
them from animadversion by the sensi-
tiveness of parties on account of their
political ends ; and turning against
their opponents, and in favor of Ca-
tholics, the patronage and the tremen-
dous influence of the administration,

60 DR. BEECHER'S

whose ascendency and continuance
might, in closely contested elections,
be thought to depend on Catholic suf-
frage. Should it be asserted that the
clergy of every denomination, can or do
exert as decisive a political influence
over their people as the Catholic clergy,
the assertion is notoriously untrue.

The ministers of no Protestant sect
could or would dare to attempt to regu-
late the votes of their people as the
Catholic priests can do, who at the
confessional learn all the private con-
cerns of their people, and have almost
unlimited power over the conscience
as it respects the performance of every
civil or social duty..

There is another point of dissimi-
larity of still greater importance. The
opinions of the Protestant clergy are
congenial with liberty — they are cho-
sen by the people who have been edu-
cated as freemen, and they are depen-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 61

dent on them for patronage and support.
The Catholic system is adverse to
liberty, and the clergy to a great extent
are dependent on foreigners opposed to
the principles of our government, for
patronage and support.

Nor is this all — the secular patro-
nage at the disposal of an associated
body of men, who under the influence
of their priesthood may be induced to
act as one, for those who favor and
against those who oppose them, would
enable them to touch far and wide
the spring of action through our cities
and through the nation. How many
presses might they influence by their
promised patronage or threatened with-
drawrnent ? How many mechanics,
merchants, lawyers, physicians, in any
political crisis, might they reach and ren-
der timid, and temporizing, and prudent
not to say sturdy, eulogists of Catho-
lics, lest they should lose the patronage
of a sect, who alone can yield a pa-
6

62

tronage to favor or to punish those who
favor or obstruct their views. And if
while they are few and feeble, compared
with the whole nation, their consolida-
ted action gives them such various and
extended influence, how will its power
extend and become omnipresent and
resistless as emigration shall quadruple
their numbers and action on the po-
litical and business men of the na-
tion?

No government is more complex and
difficult of preservation than a republic,
and in no political associations do little
adverse causes produce more disastrous
results. Of all the influences, none is
more pernicious than a corps of men
acting systematically and perseveringly
for its own ends upon a community un-
apprized of their doings, and undisci-
plined to meet and counteract them. A
tenth part of the suffrage of the nation,
thus condensed and wielded by the
Catholic powers of Europe, might de-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. OO

cide our elections, perplex our policy,
inflame and divide the nation, break the
bond of our union, and throw down our
free institutions. The voice of history
also warns us, that no sinister influence
has ever intruded itself into politics, so
virulent and disastrous as that of an am-
bitious ecclesiastical influence, or which
demands, now and always, keener vigi-
lance or a more active resistance.

But before I proceed, to prevent
misapprehension, I would say that I
have no fear of the Catholics, consider-
ed simply as a religious denomination,
and unallied to the church and state
establishments of the European govern-
ments hostile to republican institutions.

Let the Catholics mingle with us as
Americans and come with their chil-
dren under the full action of our com-
mon schools and republican institutions,
and the various powers of assimilation,
and we are prepared cheerfully to abide

64 DR. BEECHER'S

the consequences. If in these circum-
stances the Protestant religion cannot
stand before the Catholic, let it go down,
and we will sound no alarm, and ask
no aid, and make no complaint. It is
no ecclesiastical quarrel to which we
would call the attention of the Ameri-
can nation.

Nor would I consent that the civil
and religious rights of the Catholics
should be abridged or violated. As na-
turalized citizens, to all that we enjoy
we bid them welcome, and would have
their property and rights protected with
the same impartiality and efficacy that
the property and rights of every other
denomination are protected ; and we
should abhor the interposition of lawr-
less violence to injure the property or
control the rights of Catholics as vehe-
mently as if it were directed against
Protestants and their religion. For when
the day comes that lawless force pre-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. DO

vails, argument and free inquiry are
ended, and law and courts are impotent
and useless, and liberty is extinct, and
anarchy by its terrors will compel men to
call in the protection of despotic power
to save them from the pursuing hell.
The late violence done to Catholic pro-
perty at Charlestown is regarded with
regret and abhorrence by Protestants
and patriots throughout the land, though
the excitement which produced it had
no relation whatever to religious opin-
ions, and no connection with any reli-
gious denomination of Christians.

We are equally opposed to any at-
tempt to cast odium upon Catholics of
the present generation for any maxims,
doctrines or practices of past ages, which
are now by the competent authority of
the pope or a general council disavowed.
But for all the political bearings of their
unchangeable and infallible creed, and
for all the deeds of persecution and
6*

66 DR. BEECHER'S

blood, JUSTIFIED BY THEIR PRINCIPLES and

perpetuated by Catholic powers, and not
disavowed by his holiness or by a council,
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH is ACCOUNTABLE,
whatever may be the personal opinion
of particular individuals or particular
departments of that great community.
In our animadversions, however,
even on these things, a declamatory,
virulent, contemptuous, sarcastic, taunt-
ing, denunciatory style is as unchristian
as it is in bad taste and indiscreet. The
invidious technics of the old controversy
have gone into oblivion, and it is impos-
sible to bring back the image and body
of the times gone by as they stood in
dreadful reality around our persecuted
fathers; and however the urgency of
oppression in a rough age may palliate
the use of such terms by them, sound
argument with meek firmness had been
better even then : and it is one of the
most hopeful signs of the present times,

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 67

that public sentiment demands such
courtesy of all religious controvertists
now, and will not endure a dialect of
rudeness, ill-temper and violence. If
the reaction upon Catholics for the use
of such language is not as stern and
powerful as on Protestants, it is only
because as strangers and a minority,
more aggressive language will be tole-
rated in them than the Protestant ma-
jority will be permitted to hurl back ;
while even they, in the use of invidious
terms, and the manifestation of a viru-
lent, discourteous arid contemptuous
spirit, are fast using up both the sympa-
thy and patience of the community in
their behalf.

Besides, the Catholics in great num-
bers are with us, and their increase by
emigration, if it can be regulated, can
never be wholly prevented. Our rich
unoccupied territory, our national works
and their poverty and oppression at home

68 DR. BEECHER'S

will as certainly bring over adven turers
as a vacuum will call in the circumjacent
atmosphere ; and it is impossible to avert
the danger from so much exile popula-
tion but by a friendly approximation, and
the ubiquity and powerful illumination
of our institutions, and the overcoming
influence of Christian enterprise and
Christian love. It is not the striking of
the fist which will disarm them, but
words and acts of kindness and the warm
beating of our heart; while contemptu-
ous treatment will augment their hatred
of Protestants, and rivet their preju-
dice, and deliver them over double
bound to the power of their priesthood,
already too great for their happiness
and our safety.

In this view of the subject, I cannot
but regret the manner in which the con-
troversy between the Catholics and Pro-
testants has in various instances been
conducted, in which the style and temper

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 69

as the means of doing good, were the
very worst that could have been chosen,
and the very best as the means of aiding
the cause they were intended to oppose.
Important facts and powerful argu-
ments have been given, but so mingled
with invective and taunt, and sarcasm,
and reviling, as to injure the cause as
much by the disgust occasioned, as it
was aided by the power of argument.

It is to the political claims and cha-
racter of the Catholic religion, and its
church and state alliance with the po-
litical and ecclesiastical governments of
Europe hostile to liberty, and the ten-
dency upon our republican institutions
of flooding the nation suddenly with
emigrants of this description, on whom
for many years European influence
may be exerted writh such ease, and
certainty, and power, that we call the
attention of the people of this nation.
Did the Catholics regard themselves

70 DR. BEECHER'S

only as one of many denominations of
Christians, entitled only to equal rights
and privileges, there would be no such
cause for apprehension while they
peaceably sustained themselves by their
own arguments and well doing. But if
Catholics are taught to believe that
their church is the only church of Christ,
out of whose inclosure none can be
saved, — -that none may read the Bible
but by permission of the priesthood and
no one be permitted to understand it and
worship God according to the dictates
of his own conscience, — that heresy is a
capital offence not to be tolerated, but
punished by the civil power with dis-
franchisement, death and confiscation of
goods, — that the pope and the councils of
the church are infallible, and her rights
of ecclesiastical jurisdiction universal
and as far as possible and expedient may
be of right, and ought to be as a matter
of duty, enforced by the civil power, —

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 71

that to the pope belongs the right of in-
terference with the political concerns
of nations, enforced by his authority
over the consciences of Catholics, and
his power to corroborate or cancel their
oath of allegiance, and to sway them to
obedience or insurrection by the power
of life or death eternal : if such, I say,
are the maxims avowed by her pontiff^
sanctioned by her councils, stereotyped on
her ancient records, advocated by her
most approved authors, illustrated in all
ages by her history, and still UNREPEALED
and still acted upon in the armed pro-
hibition of free inquiry and religious
liberty, and the punishment of heresy
wherever her power remains unbro-
ken : if these things are so, is it invi-
dious and is it superfluous to call the
attention of the nation to the bearing
of such a denomination upon our civil
and religious institutions and equal
rights ? It is the right of SELF-PRESER-

72 DR. BEECHER'S

VATTON, and the denial of it is TREASON

Or the? INFATUATION OP FOLLY.

It is the duty also enforced by the
unparalleled novelty and urgency of our
condition ; for since the irruption of the
northern barbarians, the world has
never witnessed such a rush of dark-
minded population from one country to
another, as is now leaving Europe, and
dashing upon our shores. It is not the
northern hive, but the whole hive which
is swarming out upon our cities and
unoccupied territory as the effect of
overstocked population, of civil oppres-
sion, of crime and poverty, and political
and ecclesiastical design. Clouds like
the locusts of Egypt are rising from the
hills and plains of Europe, and on the
wings of every wind, are coming over
to settle down upon our fair fields ;
while millions, moved by the noise of
their rising and cheered by the news of
their safe arrival and green pastures,

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 73

are preparing for flight in an endless
succession.

Capitalists and landholders, who feel
in Europe the premonitions of coming
evil are transferring their treasures to
our funds, and making large investments
in land, and facilitating emigration to
augment the value of their property.
Our unoccupied soil is coming fast into
the European market, and foreign capi-
talists and speculators are holding com-
petition with our own. So that, were
there no political and no ecclesiastical
ends to be accomplished, the rapid in-
flux upon us of such masses of uneduca-
ted mind of other tongues and habits
would itself alone demand an immediate
and earnest national supervision, on the
same principles of self-preservation that
would dyke out the ocean or turn the
mountain torrent from carrying deso-
lation over our fields. For the causes
are mighty and radical which threaten
7

74 DR. BEECHER'S

us : while the peculiarity of our organ-
ization in national and state govern-
ments gives potency to their action
and imbecility to our resistance.

But if this tremendous tide of Europe-
an emigration is from two-thirds to three
quarters of it under the direction of the
feudal potentates of Europe, associated
to put down at home and abroad the
liberal institutions of the world, and to
reach us are availing themselves of a
religion which has always sustained
their thrones and been sustained by
them — despotic in its constitution and
doctrines, and in all ages found in the
ranks of despotism, contending against
the civil and religious rights of man —
a religion which extinguished the lin-
gering remains of Roman liberty, and
warred for thirty years against the
resurrection of civil and religious lib-
erty in modern Europe, and holds
now the mind in unmitigated bondage

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 75

wherever its power is unbroken, and is
the mainstay of opposition to the efforts
of European patriots to' break the yoke
and ameliorate the condition of man;
if this religion is rising in the midst of
us, by floods of annual emigration, by
its undivided suffrage to balance our
elections and sway our destiny, and by
the aid of royal munificence to endow
our institutions, and by underbidding
and gratuitous instruction to monopo-
lize the education of the coming gene-
rations,— why should we shut our eyes,
and stop our ears, and cry, Peace, while
destruction is coming ?

There is no despotism so terrible as
a popular despotism under the names
and forms of liberty, where ignorance
and prejudice, and passion and irreligion,
and crime are wielded by desperate po-
litical ambition and a corrupting for-
eign influence ; and if ever our liberties
perish, it will be by the explosion of the

76 DR. BEECHER'S

volcanic power of the European and
American populace, and foreign influ-
ence and American demagogues in bad
alliance, who will ride in the whirlwind
and direct the storm. This I am aware
is strong language. But strong lan-
guage is demanded ; for this giant nation
sleepeth and must be awaked. For
obvious and imminent as is the danger,
its development is recent, and the ac-
tion of it on many minds is prevented
by a multitude of careless, common-
place, fallacious maxims pouring con-
tempt on fear and holding the commu-
nity spell-bound ; some of which I must
note and expose.

It is nothing but a controversy about
religion, it is said — a thing which has
nothing to do with the liberty and pros-
perity of nations, and the sooner it is
banished from the world the better.

As well might it be insisted that the
sun has no influence on the solar sys-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 77

tern, or the moon on the tides. In all
ages, religion, of some kind, has been
the former of man's character and the
mainspring of his action. It has done
more to fill up the eventful page of his-
tory, than all moral causes beside. It
has been the great agitator or tranquil-
izer of nations, — the orb of darkness
or of light to the world, — the fountain
of purity or pollution, — the mighty pow-
er of riveting or bursting the chains
of men. Atheists may rage and blas-
pheme, but they cannot expel religion
of some kind from the world. Their
epidemic madness, like the volcano,
may at times break out, and obscure
the sun, and turn the moon into blood,
and extend from nation to nation the
cup of God's displeasure, covering the
earth with the slain and the fragments
of demolished inst ilutions.But it can
reconstruct nothing. It must be tem-
porary, or it would empty the earth of
7*

78 DR. BEECHER'S

its inhabitants. It will be temporary,
because so bright are the evidences of
a superior power, and so frail and full
of sorrow are men. and so guilty and
full of fears, that if Christianity does
not guide them to the true God and
Jesus Christ, superstition will send them
to the altars of demons.

But it is a contest, it is said, about
religion — and religion and politics have
no sort of connection. Let the religion-
ists fight their own battles ; only keep
the church and state apart, and there is
no danger.

It is a union of church and state,
which we fear, and to prevent which we
lift up our voice : a union which never
existed without corrupting the church
and enslaving the people, by making the
ministry independent of them and de-
pendent on -the state, and to a great
extent a sinecure aristocracy of indo-
lence and secular ambition, auxiliary to

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 79

the throne and inimical to liberty. No
treason against our free institutions
would be more fatal than a union of
church and state ; none, when perceived
would bring on itself a more overwhelm-
ing public indignation, and which all
Protestant denominations would resist
with more loathing and abhorrence.

And is there, therefore, no danger
of a church and state union, because
all denominations cannot unite, and no
one can elude the vigilant resistance of
the rest? Is there no other door at
which the innovation can come in?
How has the union been constituted in
times past? Not as coveted by the
church, and secured by her artifice or
power ; but as coveted by the state, and
sought for purposes of secular ambition
to strengthen the arm of despotic power.
It was Constantine who invited the
church into an alliance with the state,
— nay, forced upon her the corrupting

80 DR. BEECHER'S

honor. It was the kings of the earth
who gave their protection to a despotic
form of corrupted Christianity;, from
which, when the power of superstition
overmastered the sceptre, they have
been taking it away.

But in republics the temptation and
the facilities of courting an alliance
with church power may be as great as
in governments of less fluctuation. Amid
the competitions of party and the strug-
gles of ambition, it is scarcely possible
that the clergy of a large denomination
should be able to give a direction to
the suffrage of their whole people, and
not become for the time being the most
favored denomination, and in balanced
elections the dominant sect, whose influ-
ence in times of discontent may perpe-
tuate power against the unbiased ver-
dict of public opinion. The free circu-
lation of the blood is not more essential
to bodily health, than the easy, unob-

PLEA FOR THE WEST.

structed movement of public sentiment
in a republic. All combinations to fore-
stall and baffle its movements tend to
the destruction of liberty. Its fluctua-
tions are indeed an evil ; but the power
to arrest its fluctuations and chain it
down is despotism ; and when it is
accomplished by the bribed alliance of
ecclesiastical influence in the control of
suffrage, it appears in its most 'hateful
and alarming form. It is true, that the
discovery might produce a reaction, and
sweep away the ecclesiastical inter-
meddlers. But in political crises, ca-
lamities may be inflicted in a day,
which ages cannot repair ; and who can
tell, when the time comes, whether the
power will be too strong for the fetters,
or the fetters for the power? For none
but desperate men will employ such
measures for the acquisition of power;
and when desperate men have gained
power they will not relinquish it with-
out a struggle.

82 DR. EEECHER'S

The Lord deliver us from the alli-
ance of any church with the state ; for
it will be the alliance of ambition with
ambition, of corruption with corruption,
of despotism with despotism, and of a
persecuting irreligion with a persecuting
Christianity. It will produce a reac-
tion, should the alliance ever take place ;
but the conflict will be dreadful, and
blood will flow.

We say, then, with the objector, only
keep the church and state apart, and
there will be no danger. But while
you watch the door at which the alli-
ance never did come, do not forget to
watch the door at which it always has
entered — the door of the state, inviting
the alliance of church power to sustain
its own weakness, and nerve its arm for
despotic dominion.

" But why so much excitement
about the Catholic religion ? Is not one
religion just as good as another ?"

There are some who think that

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 83

Calvinism is not quite as good a religion
as some others. I have heard it de-
nounced as a severe, unsocial, self-right-
eous, uncharitable, exclusive, prosecu-
ting system — dealing damnation round
the land — compassing sea and land to
make proselytes, and forming conspira-
cies to overturn the liberties of the na-
tion by an unhallowed union of church
and state. There have been those, too,
who have thought it neither meddle-
some nor persecution to investigate the
facts in the case, and scan the republi-
can tendencies of the Calvanistic sys-
tem. Though it has always been on
the side of liberty in its struggles against
arbitrary power; though, through the
puritans, it breathed into the British
constitution its most invaluable princi-
ples, and laid the foundations of the re-
publican institutions of our nation, and
felled the forests, and fought the colo-
nial battles with Canadian Indians and

84 DR. BEECHER'S

French Catholics, when often our desti-
ny balanced on a pivot and hung upon
a hair; and though it wept, and prayed,
and fasted, and fought, and suffered
through the revolutionary struggle, when
there was almost no other creed but
the Calvanistic in the land ; still it is
the opinion of many, that its well-doings
of the past should not invest the system
with implicit confidence, or supersede
the scrutiny of its republican tendencies.
They do not think themselves required
to letCalvmistS alone; — and why should
they ? We do not ask to be let alone,
nor cry persecution when our creed or
conduct is analyzed. We are .not an-
noyed by scrutiny ; we seek no conceal-
ment. We court investigation of our
past history, and of all the tendencies of
the doctrines and doings of the friends
of the Reformation ; — and why should the
Catholic religion be exempted from scru-
tiny ? Has it disclosed more vigorous

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 85

republican tendencies ? Has it done
more to enlighten the intellect, to purify
the morals, and sanctify the hearts of
men, and fit them for self-government 1
Has it fought more frequently or suc-
cessfully the battles of liberty against
despotism ? or done more to enlighten
the intellect, purify the morals, and
sanctify the heart of the world, and pre-
pare it for universal liberty?

I protest against that unlimited
abuse with which it is thought quite
proper to round off declamatory periods
against the religion of those who fought
the battles of the reformation and the
battles of the revolution, and that sensi-
tiveness and liberality which would
shield from animadversion and spread
the mantle of charity over a religion
which never prospered but in alliance
with despotic governments, has always
been and still is the inflexible enemy of
liberty of conscience and free inquiry^
8

86 DR. BEECHER'S

and at this moment is the main stay of
the battle against republican institutions,
A despotic government and despotic reli-
gion may not be able to endure free
inquiry, but a republic and religious
liberty CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT IT. —
Where force is withdrawn, and mil-
lions are associated for self-government,
the complex mass of opinions and inte-
rests can be reduced to system and
order only by the collision and resolu-
tion of intellectual and moral forces.
To lay the ban of a fastidious charity
on religious free inquiry, would termi-
nate in unthinking apathy and the intel-
lectual stagnation of the dark ages.
Whatever European nations may do,
our nation must read and think from
length to breadth, from top to bottom.
It is a perilous experiment we have ad-
ventured upon ; but it is begun, and we
cannot go back. For mind has felt its
own power, and is girding itself for

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 87

efforts never yet made, and with
means and motives never before pos-
sessed, and on such a field as before
was never opened, and it is only the
mighty salutary action of mind which
can carry us through.

It is an anti-republican charity,
then, which would shield the Catholics,
or any other religious denomination,
from the animadversion of impartial
criticism. Denominations, as really as
books, are public property, and demand
and are benefited by criticism. And
if ever the Catholic religion is liberal-
ized and assimilated to our institutions,
it must be done, not by a sickly senti-
mentalism screening it from animad-
version, but by subjecting it to the tug
of controversy, and turning upon it the
searching inspection of the public eye,
and compelling it, like all other reli-
gions among us, to pass the ordeal of
an enlightened public sentiment.

88 DR. BEECHER'S

" But are not the Catholics sincere?
why not, then, let them alone T That
they are sincere in their faith there can
be no doubt. But what the republican
tendency of their faith is, depends on
what they believe, and not on the simple
fact that they do believe it. If they
believe in the rights and duties of uni-
versal education, of free inquiry, of
reading and understanding the Bible,
and in the liberty and equality of all
religious denominations, and that they
and we are accountable only to God
and the laws of the land, it is well.
But if they believe that the pope and
the church are infallible, — that his
ecclesiastical jurisdiction is universal, —
that he and the priests have the power
of eternal life or death, in the bestow-
ment or refusal of pardon as they obey
or disobey them, — that no man may
read the Bible without the permission
of the priesthood, or understand it but

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 89

as they interpret, — and that every
Catholic is bound to believe implicitly
as the church believes, and that all
non-Catholics are heretics, and heresy
a capital offence, and the extermination
of heretics by force duty, then the
more anti-republican the elements of
their faith are, the more terrific is their
sincerity, which on the peril of their
soul would make them the instruments
of a foreign policy in overturning our
institutions for the establishment of
those of their own church.

" But have there not been great and
good men in the Catholic Church 7"
Doubtless. Luther was a great and
good man while he was in the church,
or he had never left it ; and others have
given evidence of piety who never did
abandon her communion. But does
the existence of a few good men
in a church and state union sanctify
the system ? — are all systems contain-
8*

90 DR. BEECHER'S

ing men of talents and piety of good
republican tendency ? There may be
great and good men in Russia, and
Prussia, and Austria, and Italy; but
does that prove the republican tenden-
cies of their religious systems ? It
might be well to ascertain, too, whether
the great and good men in the Catho-
lic church have ever exerted a predo-
minant influence in it, and have not
rather endured what they could not
reform, and if not persecuted, were
tolerated in an impotent minority for
the credit their virtues gave, without
the power of changing the maxims and
tendencies of the system? Whether
Catholics are pious or learned, is not the
question ; but what are the republican
tendencies of their system ? I am press-
ing upon republican America that it
is better for her to educate her popula-
tion by her own sons and money,
than to rely on the school-masters and

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 91

charitable contributions of the despotic
governments of Catholic Europe — and
the more piety, and talent, and learning
they should bring to our aid, the more
deep and indelible would be the im-
pression they might make adverse to
our religious and political institu-
tions.

"But have not the Catholics just as
good a right to their religion as other
denominations have to theirs 7" I have
said so. I not only admit their equal
rights, but insist upon them ; and am
prepared to defend their rights as I am
those of my own and other Protestant
denominations. The CatJwlics have a
perfect right to proselyte the nation to
their faith if they are able to do it. But
I too have the right of preventing it if I
am able. They have a right freely to
propagate their opinions and arguments;
and I too have a right to apprise the na-
tion of their political bearings on our

92 DR. BEECHER'S

republican institutions. They have a
right to test the tendencies of protestant-
ism by an appeal to history ; and I, by
an appeal to history, have a right to
illustrate the coincidence between the
political doctrines and the practice of
the Catholic church, and to show that
always they have been hostile to civil
and religious liberty. The Catholics
claim and exercise the liberty of ani-
madverting on the doctrines and doings
of Protestants, and we do not complain
of it : — and why should they or their
friends complain that we in turn should
animadvert on the political maxims and
doings of the Catholic church ? Must
Catholics have all the liberty — their own
and ours too ? Can they not endure the
reaction of free inquiry 1 Must we lay
our hand on our mouth in their presence,
and stop the press ? Let them count the
cost and such as cannot bear the scrutiny
of free inquiry return where there is none ;

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 93

for though we would kindly accommo-
date them in all practicable ways, we
cannot surrender our rights for their
accommodation.

But are not the Catholic priesthood
useful to keep in order their unlettered
population, to secure the restitution of
property, and in cases of popular tumult,
by the waving of the hand to allay ex-
citement and obviate violence ?

But how much better it were if their
people were so educated as not wrong-
fully to take the property of their neigh-
bors. And what per centage do you
imagine ever returns to the owner by the
instrumentality of the confessional and
the priesthood. And as to the power of
stilling tumults by waving the hand were
it not better so to educate their people as
to prevent such insurrections of wrath.
And in what sort of elementary prepa-
ration for naturalization at the polls is
the mind of a mob — whose rage may be

94 DR. BEECHER'S

tamed and their purpose controlled by
the waving of a bishop's hand? — and
what if this hand should wave onward
instead of off? And how felicitous the
condition of American citizens, who de-
pend gratefully upon the hand and will
of a Catholic bishop to protect them
from elubs, and conflagration, and the
knife !

For what was the city of Boston for
five nights under arms — her military
upon the alert — her citizens enrolled,
and a body of five hundred men con-
stantly patrolling the streets? Why
were the accustomed lectures for public
worship, and other public secular meet-
ings, suspended ? Why were the citi-
zens, at sound of bell, convened at
mid-day in Fanuiel Hall? — to hear
Catholicism eulogized, and thanksgiv-
ings offered to his reverence the bishop,
for his merciful protection of the chil-
dren of the pilgrims ! And why by the

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 95

cradle of liberty, and under the sha-
dow of Bunker's Hill, did men turn pale,
and whisper, and look over their shoul-
ders and around to ascertain whether
it were safe to speak aloud, or meet to
worship God 1 Has it come to this ? —
that the capital of New-England has
been thrown into consternation by the
threats of a Catholic mob, and that her
temples and mansions stand only through
the forbearance of a Catholic bishop ?
There can be no liberty in the presence
of such masses of dark mind, and of
such despotic power over it in a single
man. Safety on such terms is not the
protection of law, but of single handed
despotism. Will our great cities con-
sent to receive protection from the
Catholic priesthood — dependent on the
Catholic powers of Europe, and favored
by his holiness, who is himself governed
by the bayonets of Austria 1

I do not forget that non-Catholics

96

were first in the aggression, or depre-
cate the proper conduct of the bishop
in restraining the indignation of his
people at the wrong which had been
done them. — I am answering an argu-
ment often urged in favor of the Catho-
lic religion, viz : the influence of its
clergy in protecting us against popular
tumults; and my answer is — that the
population which can be governed thus
by the power of superstition is a dange-
rous population — and the power which
governs it a dangerous power — and I
allude to the panic and military array
in Boston to illustrate the peril and
commotion which a small body of Ca-
tholic population may produce in spite
of clerical power — and to place in me-
rited contempt, the idea that the Catho-
lic religion should be advocated on the
ground of its power of protecting Pro-
testant republicans, against the violence
of its own people. And I am sure I

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 97

express but a small portion of the dis-
gust which was felt in Boston at the
sycophantic eulogies of the Catholic
religion, and of the Catholic bishop — as
if he had immortalized himself, and
placed Boston under everlasting obliga-
tions for having done what was as
much the dictate of a sagacious policy
as it was also the dictate of duty.

But, it is said, " the Catholics do not
interfere at all with the religion of their
Protestant pupils. They have no such
design. They promise not to do it, and
only require as a matter of decency and
order a conformity to the rules of the
school."

They cannot help interfering with the
religion of their pupils. The known
opinions and kind attentions of instruct-
ors sedulous to please, and a constant
familiarity with their example and reli-
gious instruction and the doctrines, pray-
ers, ceremonies and worship of the
9

98 DR. BEECHER'S

church, cannot fail to affect the mind
of Protestant youth — allaying appre-
hension, conciliating affection, inspiring
confidence and undermining their Pro-
testant education — until they became
either sceptics, or devotees, or at least the
friends and apologists and auxiliaries
of Catholics. You may as well sus-
pend the attraction of gravity, or inter-
cept the connection between cause and
effect, as to prevent the adverse action
of a Catholic education on the minds
of Protestant children.

" But they have no design to subvert
the religion of Protestant children."

And what if they have no design 7
Will the absence of a deliberate pur-
pose stay the influence or avert the
effects of such powerful tendencies
constantly acting upon the youthful
mind? The action of physical and
moral causes is not dependent on de-
sign. Fire will burn, and poisons

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 99

destroy, independent of the malignant
purpose in the application.

But have they no design ? Is not the
system of instruction, and every rela-
tion and circumstance of the condition
of their pupils, a matter of deliberate
arrangement 1 and is it not as well
adapted to produce effect as it could
be? and are not the consequences con-
tinually witnessed? Do they not
studiously withhold Catholic children
from the action of such causes in
Protestant schools, and tax their own
people, and supplicate the royal munifi-
cence of Catholic Europe to rear
schools and colleges for the cheap and
even gratuitous education of Protestant
children, high and low, — while thou-
sands of Catholic children are utterly
neglected and uncared for, and aban-
doned to ignorance and vice ? And is
all this without design ?

" But they promise not to interfere

100 DR. BEECHER'S

with the religion of their Protestant
pupils, only so far as is implied in
conformity to the regulations of the
school," — i. e. they will not coerce and
persecute them, nor assail them by
direct disputation and argument —
which would preclude the access of
pupils; while the entire associations
and influences and instruction of the
school are in the most dexterous man-
ner possible contrived to effect that
which they promise not to attempt.
There is an inhibition of such free con-
versation and discussion on disputed
points by the students among them-
selves, as would be calculated to sus-
tain Protestant opinions and associa-
tions. The entire absence of all Pro-
testant books touching religion, with
the presence of those which are Catho-
lic; while by separate beds, and si-
lence, and the presence of an overseer
in the lodging room and in all their

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 101

amusements and walks and ways, the
action of every thing Protestant is sus-
pended, and the active, universal, con-
stant action becomes Catholic. Every
day they assist, — i. e. they unite in
Catholic worship — engage in and com-
ply with their forms and ceremonies —
commit their catechisms, recite their
prayers to the Virgin Mary and for the
repose of the dead, and make the
crosses and genuflexions. They are not
permitted to attend Protestant worship,
but hear points of Catholic doctrine
explained, discussed arid defended.*
In short, they receive as pefect a Catho-
lic education as the Catholic children
themselves who are educated among
them.

* A gentleman who passed four years in the
seminary at Bardstown, stated to a friend of mine
recently, that in the whole time he never heard but
two sermons which were not in explanation and
defence of some point of Catholic faith.
9*

102 DR. BEECHER'S

In St. Mary's College, Baltimore,
" No books foreign to the course of
study are SUFFERED to circulate in the
College, unless signed by the presi-
dent."

In Georgetown, D. C., " The exer-
cises of religious worship are Catholic.
It is required that members of other
religious denominations assist at the
public duties of religion with their
companions."

At the AthenaBum, Cincinnati, "it
is not deemed an infringement of liberty
that all our pupils should assist together
at religious exercises."

At St. Joseph's College, Bardstown,
•Kentucky, the students of other deno-
minations are received upon the sole
condition of attending morning and
evening prayer daily, and catechism
and divine service on Sundays and
holy days.

What more could Catholics do, or

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 103

Protestant parents permit to be done 7
What more do Protestants do to edu-
cate their children in the Protestant
faith, than is avowed and permitted
and done to convert Protestant children
to the Catholic faith 1 — and all under
the trifling reservation of " expected
conformity to the regulations of the
school."

They hold up to the ear of unreflect-
ing credulity, the promise of non-inter-
ference with the religion of the pupils.
But do they promise that they will not
by studied attention seek to gain their
confidence and affection'? and that by
dextrous insinuation and remark, they
will not attempt to undermine their
confidence in the religion of their pa-
rents 1 That they will not heave the
sigh nor drop the tear in their presence,
that their parents should be heretics,
and their beloved pupils aliens from the
only church in which they can possi-

104 DR. BEECHER'S

bly be saved. If they do, then doubtless
they break their promise. For pro-
mises are obligatory in the sense in
which they are known to be understood
by those to whom they are made.
But Catholics know that Protestants
would not send their children to their
schools, if they believed their children
would be made Catholics, or their prin-
ciples undermined — and understand
them to promise that nothing of this
kind shall be done; while Catholics
know that the influence under which
the children are placed, is as wisely
and powerfully adapted to do this as a
system of means can be ; and by long
experience they know and admit — and
exult in it — that it produces just this
effect, and call upon their European
friends to aid them in rearing semina-
ries because of their admirable influ-
ence in conciliating Protestant children
toward the Catholic religion. And if

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 105

Protestants are justly punished for their
carelessness and credulity, that is no
justification or excuse for the disappoint-
ments of the honest confidence which
the Protestant community have reposed
in these promises.

They do promise not to interfere
with the religion of Protestant children
committed to their schools. But what
do they say, when writing to their
missionary patrons in Europe, as to the
effect on Protestant children of this
confidence reposed in their promises by
their parents?

The quotations which follow are
translated from a French Catholic mis-
sionary publication called the " An-
nales," by a friend of the writer, whose
ability and integrity are unquestioned ;
and from a report of the doings of the
general convention of the whole Catho-
lic church in the United States, held in
Baltimore. Both these publications
were circulated among Catholics in

106 DR. BEECHER'S

Europe, to enkindle their missionary
zeal and secure contributions, and fell
accidentally into the hands of a Protes-
tant gentleman travelling in Europe,
by whom they were sent home for
translation.

" Mr. Flaget has established in his
diocese many convents of nuns devoted
to the education of young females.
These establishments do wonderful
good. Catholics and Protestants are
admitted indiscriminately. The latter,
after having finished their education,
return to the bosom of their families,
full of esteem and veneration for their
instructresses. They are ever ready
to refute the calumnies, which the
jealousy of heretics loves to spread
against the religious communities : and
often, when they have no longer any op-
position of their relations to 'fear •, they
embrace the Catholic religion''1 — Quar-
terly Register, vol. 2, 1830— page 194.

They promise not to interfere with

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 107

the religion of their Protestant pupils,
and simple-hearted Protestant parents
confide in their promises ; and thus are
they requited by those who, it seems,
knowingly spread the snare for their
feet, and to their friends in Europe
exult in their success.

The bishop of Bardstown, Kentucky,
says :

" Had I treasures at my disposal, I
would multiply colleges and schools for
girls and boys ; I would consolidate all
these establishments, by annexing to
them lands or annual rents ; I would build
hospitals and public houses : in a word,
I would compel all MY KENTUCKIANS to
admire and love a religion so benificent
and generous, and perhaps I should fin-
ish by converting them" — Quarterly Re-
gister, vol. 2, 1830— page 194.

The next year the same bishop
writes :

" I have the greatest confidence we

108 DR. BEECHER'S

shall be able in a short time to liquidate
our debts; and shall then have the
opportunity of educating gratis a much
larger number of pupils in our seminary
for the good of the church in Kentucky."
Quarterly Register, vol. 2, 1830 — page
195.

Again he says :

" Since the holy Catholic religion
has exhibited itself in Kentucky with a
certain splendor, — since schools for
girls and boys, into which all sects are
admitted, have been multiplied, our
many churches built, and our doctrine
clearly and solidly explained in them
on Sundays and festivals, the most hap-
py revolution is effected in her favor.
To the most inveterate prejudices have
succeeded astonishment, admiration,
and the desire of knowing our princi-
ples. Now the conversions are nume-
rous. In twelve jubilees, wherein I have
presided, more than forty Protestants

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 109

have entered the church ; a great num-
ber still are preparing to share the same
happiness, — and I have hardly gone
over the half of Kentucky." — Quarterly
Register, vol. 2, 1830— page 197.

In the proceedings of the Catholic
convention sent to the missionary pa-
trons of -Europe, they say it was propo-
sed to form a central seminary for the
whole metropolitan jurisdiction where
young persons should be educated at a
low cost, and prepared for the functions
of the priesthood, — at a low cost, remem-
ber,— and that they especially invite in
their seminaries Protestant pupils. In
the same reports, they say :

" There is also a society of men who
do for boys what is done by the ladies
for girls. These schools are frequented
not only by the Catholic, but also by
Protestant children, many of whom em-
brace the Catholic religion, or at least
receive impressions in its favor, which
10

110 DR. BEECHER'S

they carry into the bosom of their fami-
lies"— Quarterly Register, vol. 3, 1831
— page 98.

The Sisters of Charity began their
establishment at Baltimore in 1809. In
1810 they removed to Emmetsburgh,
in Maryland. Seventy in number pro-
fessed, or novices, and a hundred female
boarders.

" From that place they have sent co-
lonies to Baltimore, Washington, Fred-
erick, Montagne, Philadelphia, New-
York, Albany, Harrisburgh, and St.
Louis. In these different places, they
receive and instruct orphans, and have
a school for unfortunate children, the
number of which is enormous. There
are some schools containing from five
to six hundred. At Baltimore, besides
the asylum and free school, they have
the care of the lying-in-hospital belong-
ing to the medical school. Those of St.
Louis have also the care of the hospital

PLEA FOR THE WEST. Ill

of that city. All these different branches
are connected with a central government,
in the parent house at Emmetsburgh.
They form together but one body.
They live under the rule of St. Vincent
de Paul, with a little variation, thought
indispensable by the ecclesiastical supe-
riors. One of these is the boarding es-
tablishment of the parent house, with
the double object of giving a Christian
education to Protestants as well as Catho-
lics, (a want deeply felt in these regions.)"
— Quarterly Register, vol. 3, 1831-
page 98.

What are the motives of these Ca-
tholics in neglecting the education of
their own children, and extending such
cheap and even gratuitous facilities of
education to Protestants 1 and what is
it which all at once has warmed the
heart of pope and cardinals, potentates,
princes, prime ministers and nobles, to
endow for us Protestants such ample

112 DR. BEECHER'S

means of cheap instruction 1 We per-
ceive in the preceding extracts, and the
one which follows, what the motives
are which the Catholics of this country,
in their communications, press upon
their patrons in Europe, and which
bring out their exuberant charities.

" The missions of America are of
high importance to the church. The
superabundant population of ancient
Europe is flowing toward the United
States. Each one arrives, not with his
religion, but with his indifference. The
greater part are disposed to embrace the
doctrine, whatever it may be, which is
first preached to them. We must make
haste ; the moments are precious. Ame-
rica may one day become the centre of
civilization; and shall truth or error
establish there its empire ? IF THE
PROTESTANT SECTS ARE BEFOREHAND WITH
US, IT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO DESTROY
THEIR INFLUENCE.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 113

"'Mgr. Fenwick,' adds the editor,
' is laboring with an admirable zeal to
combat this influence of the Protestant
sects in the mission entrusted to him.
Numerous conversions have already
crowned his efforts ; and he has even
been able to establish a convent, all the
nuns of which are Protestants, who
have abjured their former faith.' " —
Quarterly Register, vol. 2, 1830 — page
198.

And now, in view of these disclo-
sures, let me ask, can a Protestant pro-
fessor of religion, covenant to train up
his children in the nurture and admoni-
tion of the Lord, and then deliver them
over to a Catholic education, and not
violate his vow ? — and can patriots
swear to be faithful to the constitution
of the United States, and commit the
education of their republican children to
Catholic schools and seminaries, and do
no violence to their oath ? Can Jesuits
10*

114 DR. BEECHER'S

and nuns, educated in Europe, and sus-
tained by the patronage of Catholic
powers in arduous conflict for the des-
truction of liberty, be safely trusted to
form the mind and opinions of the young
hopes of this great nation 1 — Is it not
treason to commit the formation of re-
publican children to such influences ?

It is time to awake out of sleep on
the subject, and that the sanction of a
correct, concentrated, all-powerful pub-
lic sentiment should stamp infatuation
and shame upon it. Nothing fills the
Catholics with such amazement and
high hopes as the simple-hearted credu-
lity and recklessness of Protestants, in
committing their children to their form-
ing hand; and nothing certainly can be
more wonderful or more fatal in its in-
fluence on our republican institutions.

But, it is said, " this outcry of a con-
spiracy to overturn our republican insti-
tutions by immigration and ecclesiasti-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 115

cal influence is a false alarm. There is
no such design."

If there be no such design, the facts
in the case are as adverse to our safety
as if they were the parts of a settled
plan. The number of the immigrants,
who lack of information, their unac-
quaintance with the principles of our go-
vernment, their superstition and implicit
confidence in their ecclesiastical teach-
ers, and the dependence of these on
Rome, and of Rome upon Austria, — all
constitute an influence of dangerous ac-
tion in themselves, and offer to the pow-
ers of Europe, easy and effectual means
of disturbing the healthful action of our
institutions, which, if it did escape their
design to contrive, cannot be expected
long to escape their sagacity to employ.
It is like a train of powder between an
enemy's camp and our own magazine ;
which, though laid by accident, may not
be expected long to escape observation
and use.

116 DR. BEECHER'S

But if the civil and ecclesiastical
powers of Europe have no such design,
they lack the ordinary discretion and
conduct of men in their condition, an-
noyed and endangered, as they feel
themselves to be, by our republican in-
stitutions. If they have no design to
extend their influence by ecclesiastical
power, they have forgotten also all the
past analogies of supposed duty, — their
faith authorizing and requiring them
to extend the Catholic religion the
world over, by persuasion if they can,
and by force if they must and are able.
And when or where has their executive
zeal fallen in the rear of their physical
ability.

If they have no design, they do not
pursue the analogy of their past policy
in similar circumstances, which has
been always to compensate for losses at
home by new efforts to extend their in-
fluence abroad. It was the boast of the
Catholic church, when she lost half

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 117

Europe by the Reformation, that she
had more than compensated her loss by
the new enterprise of her Jesuit mis-
sionaries in India and South America.
But during the last half century her
power in Europe has been as much cur-
tailed by infidelity and revolution, as
before it had been by the Reformation.
" The spirit of the age," which Bona-
parte says dethroned him, is moving
on to put an end in Europe to Catho-
lic domination, creating the necessity
of making reprisals abroad for what
liberty conquers at home. Their policy
points them to the West, the destined
centre of civilization and political pow-
er once their own, and embracing now
their ancient settlements and institu-
tions and people, and not a little wealth
— bounded on the north by a Catholic
population, and on the south by a con-
tinent not yet emancipated from their
dominion, and agitated by the at pre-

118

sent successful conflicts of the Catholic
priesthood to extinguish free institutions
and reconstruct those of despotic power
— there can be no doubt that Catholi-
cism in St. Domingo and South America
is destined to feel the quickening ener-
gies of the political powers of Europe,
as the only means remaining to them
of combating the march of liberal in-
stitutions ; and it cannot be denied that
those empires of superstitious mind offer
the fairest opportunity now remaining
to the Catholic church of making a
stand, and perpetuating for a season
her political and ecclesiastical dominion.
But why is it so flippantly said, and
so confidently believed, that there is no
design on the part of the powers of
Europe to annoy us by the introduction
of a disturbing political religious influ-
ence among us ? What can evidence
design, if obvious and powerful motives,
frank declaration, and the extensive

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 119

and vigorous adaptation of means to
the end, do not ? But American tra-
velers at Rome and Vienna, assure us,
that in the upper circles the enterprise
of reducing our western states to spirit-
ual subserviency to the see of Rome is a
subject of avowed expectation, and high
hope, and sanguine confidence, while
the correspondence of the Catholic bish-
ops and priests in this country to their
noble and royal patrons in Europe are
full of the same predictions and high
hopes, as motives to their immediate
and copious charities to establish Cath-
olic institutions at the West.

The bishop of Bardstown, Ken-
tucky, says :

" Had I treasures at my disposal, I
would multiply colleges, and schools
for girls and boys ; I would consolidate
all these establishments, by annexing
to them lands or annual rents ; I would
build hospitals and public houses : in a

120 DR. BEECHER'S

word, I would compel all MY KENTUCK-
IANS to admire and love a religion so
beneficial and generous, and perhaps I
should finish by converting them."*

The bishop of Cincinnati, on the
same page, says :

" The missions of America are of
high importance to the church. The
superabundant population of ancient
Europe is flowing toward the United
States. Each one arrives, not with his
religion, but with his indifference.
The greater part are disposed to em-
brace the doctrine, whatever it may be,
which is first preached to them. We
must make haste ; the moments are
precious. America may one day be-
come the centre of civilization ; and
shall truth or error establish there its
empire? IF THE PROTESTANT SECTS

ARE BEFOREHAND WITH US, IT WILL BE

DIFFICULT TO DESTROY THEIR INFLUENCE.

* Quarterly Register, vol. 2, 1830— page 194.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 121

" l Mgr. Fenwick,' adds the editor,
1 is laboring with an admirable zeal to
combat this influence of the Protestant
sects in the mission entrusted to him.
Numerous conversions have already
crowned his efforts ; and he has even
been able to establish a convent, all the
nuns of which are Protestants, who
have abjured their former faith.' "*

A Catholic priest, writing appa-
rently from Cincinnati to a friend in
Europe, says :

" Since the Bishop's arrival, a great
number of persons have presented
themselves for instruction in the true
religion. I hope, if the Lord blesses
our efforts, we shall be able to finish
the cathedral and found a college.
We shall see the truth triumph, the
temples of idols overthrown, and the
seat of falsehood brought to silence.
This is the reason that we conjure all

* Quarterly Register, vol. 2, 1830 — page 198.
11

122 DR. BEECHER'S

the Christians of Europe — (i. e, all the
Catholics) — to unite in order to ask of
God the conversion of those unhappy
infidels or heretics. What a happiness,
if by our feeble labors and our vows,
we shall so merit as to see the sava-
ges of this diocese civilized, and all
the United States embraced in the
same unity of the Catholic church, in
which dwells truth and temporal hap-
piness."*

Bishop England, in his late address
to the clergy of his diocese, on his
return from Rome, speaking of the pre-
lates of the church of Ireland, says :

" They are ready, as far as our
hierarchy shall require their co-opera-
tion, to give it their best exertions in
selecting and forwarding, from amongst
the numerous aspirants to the sacred
ministry that are found in the island of
saints, a sufficient number of those

* Quarterly Register, vol. 2, 1830— page 198.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 123

properly qualified to supply our defi-
ciencies."

Such is the language employed by
Catholics in this country, to stimulate
the hopes and efforts of Catholics in
Europe, and especially the royal pa-
trons of the three powerful missionary
societies — one at Rome, the other at
Vienna, and the third in France — but
the centres, no doubt, of correspondence
throughout Catholic Europe, and the
reservoirs of her copious charities. We
have accidentally fallen upon the items
of fifty thousand dollars in one dona-
tion, and sixty thousand in another, and
twenty thousand, besides the frequent
recognition in their correspondence of
efficacious aid, the amount of which ifr
not named.

Bishop England says :

"During my absence, I have not
been negligent of the concerns of this
diocese. I have endeavored to interest

124 DR. BEECHER'S

in its behalf several eminent and digni-
fied personages whom I had the good
fortune to meet ; and have continued to
impress with a conviction of the pro-
priety of continuing their generous aid,
the administration of those societies
from which it has previously received
valuable succor. In Paris and at
Lyons I have conversed with those
excellent men who manage the affairs
of the association for propagating the
faith. This year their grant to this
diocese has been larger than usual. I
have also had opportunities of commu-
nication with some of the Council
which administers the Austrian associ-
ation ; they continue to feel an interest
in our concerns. The Propaganda in
Rome, though greatly embarrassed,
owing to the former plunder of its funds
by rapacious infidels, has this year
contributed to our extraordinary ex-
penditure ; as has the holy father him-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 125

self, in the kindest manner, from the
scanty stock which constitutes his
private allowance."

But we need not the list of donations.
The results that are starting up before
our eyes, as if by magic, lift the veil,
and discover that a portion of the re-
sources which potentates once squan-
dered in war are beginning to be appro-
priated in munitions for the moral con-
flict— the battle of institutions — and
that the field of battle is the American
republic, and especially the West.

Four years ago the Catholic popu-
lation was estimated at half a million,
and in the single year of 1832 one hun-
dred and fifty thousand were added, and
the numbers every year since have
greatly increased, and the Catholics
predict still greater numbers the cur-
rent and coming years. A great pro-
portion of them are poor ; and though
in various forms an oppressive taxation

126 DR. BEECHER'S

swallows up all the earnings they do
not consume or squander, the revenue
fails, it is said, by the Catholics them-
selves, to support their clergy. Their
multiplied and multiplying institutions,
cathedrals of royal splendor, and colle-
ges, and nunneries, and cheap schools,
and free schools rise therefore to attest
the sincerity and energy of political Eu-
ropean patronage.

But the numerical power, without
augmentation, would be too small to
accomplish the end ; and, therefore,
Catholic Europe is throwing swarm on
swarm upon our shores. They come,
also, not undirected. There is evidently
a supervision abroad — and one here —
by which they come, and set down to-
gether, in city or country, as a Catholic
body, and are led or followed quickly
by a Catholic priesthood, who maintain
over them in the land of strangers and
unknown tongues an ascendency as

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 127

absolute as they are able to exert in
Germany itself.

Their embodied and insulated con-
dition, as strangers of another tongue,
and their unacquaintance with Protes-
tants, and prejudices against them, and
their fears and implicit obedience of
their priesthood, and aversion to instruc-
tion from book, or tract, or Bible, but
with their consent, tend powerfully to
prevent assimilation and perpetuate the
principles of a powerful cast. Hence,
while Protestant children, with unceas-
ing assiduity, are gathered into Catholic
schools, their own children, with a vigi-
lance that never sleeps, and is upon them
both when they go out and come in, and
is conversant with all their ways, are
kept extensively from Sabbath schools,
from our republican common schools,
and from worship in Protestant families,
and from all such alliance of affection
as might supplant the control of the

128 DR. BEECHER'S

priesthood over them; so, that, as the
bishop of Cincinnati said, to a Protes-
tant, " We multiply by securing all our
Catholic children, so that every family
in process of time becomes six."

If they associated with republicans,
the power of caste would wear away.
If they mingled in our schools, the re-
publican atmosphere would impregnate
their minds. If they scattered, unas-
sociated, the attrition of circumstances
would wear off their predilections and
aversions. If they could read the Bible,
and might and did, their darkened in-
tellect would brighten, and their bowed
down mind would rise. If they dared
to think for themselves, the contrast of
Protestant independence with their
thraldom, would awaken the desire of
equal privileges, and put an end to an
arbitrary clerical dominion over trem-
bling superstitious minds. If the pope
and potentates of Europe held no do-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 129

minion over ecclesiastics here, we might
trust to time and circumstances to miti-
gate their ascendency and produce as-
similation. But for conscience sake and
patronage, they are dependent on the
powers that be across the deep, by
whom they are sustained and nurtured ;
and receive and organize all who come,
and retain all who are born ; while by
argument, and a Catholic education,
they beguile the children of credulous
unsuspecting Protestants into their own
communion.

No design ! How does it happen that
their duty, and the analogy of their past
policy, and their profession in Europe,
and their predictions and exultation in
this country, and their deeds, all well
adapted to their end, should come to-
gether accidentally with such admirable
indications of design ? If such compli-
cated indications of design may exist
without design, as well may the broader

130 DR. BEECHER'S

mechanism of the world be regarded as
the offspring of chance.

Had the Catholic power of the holy
alliance declared their purpose in due
time to subdue us by force, and sent out
fleets, with munitions and men and offi-
cers, in bright array — to move through
the land, seizing passes, fortifying emi-
nences, and every where rearing bar-
racks, arsenals and forts, and military
schools for the gratuitous instruction of
our sons, the evidence of a designed
assault would not surpass the prepara-
tions for our subjection by a conflict of
institutions.

They do design the subversion of our
institutions ; so far as a Catholic ascen-
dency of literary institutions and eccle-
siastical and political influence would be
their subversion ; and according to their
views they ought to, for their time or
ours is short. If our light continues, their
darkness passes away ; and if our pros-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 131

0

perity continues, their overturnings can-
not be stopped till revolution has traveled
round the globe, and the earth is free.

It is said again, " the conspiracy, if
real, to overthrow our republic by immi-
gration and a foreign religion, is impo-
tent and chimerical — a thing which can-
not be done."

Indeed ! Is our republic, then, so ma-
ture, and solid, and strong, as to bid de-
fiance to peril ? Our wisest men have
regarded its preservation, when formed
of native citizens, only as an experiment,
— urged on by high hopes, indeed, and
strenuous efforts, but amid stupendous
difficulties, and not yet consummated.
And though hitherto our ship has weath-
ered every storm, has it been accom-
plished with such ease and safety as to
justify the proud contempt of greater
dangers ?

Nothing is more easy than the per-
version of associated mind ; or difficult,

132 DR. BEECHER'S

than its recovery to sanity and a health-
ful self-government. To let out the
storm, and roll up the angry wave, is
easy; but to still the tumult of the peo-
ple lies often only within the reach of
that power which holds the winds, and
stilleth the tumult of the sea. We have
surmounted past difficulties also by
means of a comparative homogenity of
character, opinions and interests, the
result of our colonial training and revo-
lutionary struggle, and while the ship
was navigated by those who aided in
her construction and launching. But
another generation has arisen ; and great
difficulties are yet to be encountered,
demanding equal wisdom, unity, and
firmness, and decision, and rendering the
accumulation of a powerful adverse in-
fluence justly alarming. And of all
others, a religious influence, in the hands
of ecclesiastics, and perverted to pur-
poses of secular intrigue and political

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 133

intermeddling, is most to be feared.
While religion, pure and undefiled, is as
indispensable to the perfection of society
and the propitious results of government,
as the sun is to light, and order, and ve-
getation, and life, it becomes such only
by being kept in its own department,
to send out through all relations its
mild, purifying, tranquilizing, but mighty
and all-pervading energy. But it is too
much for one class of men to unite in
the same hands the power of both
worlds. Instead of coalescing, they
should be vigilantly and efficaciously
kept apart.

With sincere approbation and thanks-
giving to God, I regard the article of
our constitution prohibiting forever an
alliance of any church with the state.
And though I regard as needless and
just, the constitutional exclusion of the
clergy in some states from eligibility to
office, as if the people were incompetent
12

DR. EEECHER'S

to be trusted in the selection of their
own servants ; yet did I believe that
they were incompetent, and that they
would not as a general fact confine the
clergy to their own vocation, I should
much prefer that the exclusion had been
universal. For I have never witnessed
a clergyman active in the collision of
party politics, or absorbed in secular
cares of legislation, without feeling and
perceiving that others felt, that the man
was out of his place, and religion dis-
graced.*

* No doubt such avowals will surprise many,
who have been led to suppose that the writer, and
the Congregational and Presbyterian denominations
with which he has been associated, are in the van of
ambitious desire, and sinister intrigue, and unholy
plotting to compass a union of church and state in
their own behalf. I have only to say, that the sen-
timents on this subject avowed in this discourse, are
the sentiments of my whole life, and the regulators
of my conduct ; and have been repeatedly, in
various forms, published within the last ten years ;

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 135

The purse and the sword includes
too much power to be united in the
same hands. But how is the peril aug-
mented when both these, with the sanc-
tions of God's eternal government, are
concentrated in clerical hands, and di-
rected to political purposes, in the gov-
ernment of nations. Such a priesthood,
as a body, cannot be spiritual, or pure,
or safe, but always has been, and always

and are in accordance with the views of the great
body of the Congregational and Presbyterian minis-
ters whom I now know, and have ever known.
Should any, however, be still troubled in mind at
the apprehension of our .machinations, they may
well be tranquilized if they will search the records
of legislation and political office in this nation, and
in all the states, and witness how harmless and im-
potent our intrigues must have been to secure either
legislative power or official trust ; and how large a
portion of popular and governmental favor has fallen,
happily for us, as I think, upon clerical men without
the sphere of the Congregational and Presbyterian
denominations.

136

DR. BEECHER'S

will be, a corrupt and intriguing priest-
hood, perverting its spiritual power over
the consciences of men, to the control
of their physical and civil action in ac-
cordance with his own will and the
purposes of a despotic government.

The history of five hundred years
attests the baleful influence which one
of the feeblest political powers of Eu-
rope has been able to exert upon the
governments around him, by his spirit-
ual dominion over the consciences of
their subjects. There never was a time
when the pope could by the power of
arms control the policy of surrounding
nations ; and yet for ages, by the terrors
of his spiritual power over the con-
sciences of their dark-minded subjects,
he bound kings in chains and princes in
fetters of iron, — because, if they diso-
beyed his will, he could by his power
over the consciences of their subjects,
in a moment blast them with a curse

PLEA FOR THE WEST.

137

and interdict, which would cause them
to be shunned like leprous men, or sent
out like Nebuchadnezzar to graze
among oxen. It is the spiritual power
of the pope over the civil destiny of na-
tions, through the medium of his priest-
hood and the consciences of men, which
has in all periods rendered the election
of the pope a subject of such high interest
and earnest competition and intrigue
by the different nations of Europe.

By the Reformation, half Europe
was disenthralled from the action of
this dreadful power. And the exten-
sion of commerce and the arts, the illu-
mination of science, the power of scep-
ticism, and the advance of liberal opin-
ions and of revolution and reform, have
done much in Germany, Switzerland,
France, Spain, and Portugal, to annihi-
late this power of religion, perverted to
secular ends. But in Austria, and Bo-
hemia, and Ireland, the spell is not bro-
12*

138 DR. BEECHER'S

ken ; and the perverted power of both
worlds is concentrated to darken and
enslave mind, and perpetuate civil and
ecclesiastical despotism ; while in the
nations named, there are millions upon
millions, whose physical and civil action
can be controlled by the influence of
their priesthood, through the medium of
their religion, as implicitly, and as ac-
curately as the soldiers of Frederick
could be moved to fight his battles.

But it is notorious, that the Catholic
immigrants to this country are generally
of the class least enlightened, and most
implicit in their religious subjection to
the priesthood, who are able, by their
spiritual ascendency, to direct easily
and infallibly the exercise of their civil
rights and political action. And it were
easy to show, were this the time and
place, that they do interfere in the ex-
action of fees, in the control of children,
and in the article of marriage, as no

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 139

Protestant minister ever did or would
dare to attempt; and that a secular in-
fluence is beginning to be exerted over
the political action of their dependent,
confiding people.

And is there no danger from a popu-
lation of nearly a million, augmenting
at the rate of two or three hundred thou-
sand a year by immigration ; whose phys-
ical power, and property, and vote, are,
as entirely as in Europe, within the reach
of clerical influence ? Is it, then, a vain
hope of European potentates, endan-
gered by our free institutions, that they
shall be able to clog, and perplex, and
stop their movements by thrusting in
such a disturbing force, — rearing up in
fact a distinct nation of their own sub-
jects, organized and wielded by them,
in the midst of us 1 Is a perverted reli-
gious power so feeble and innoxious,
that its threatened agency in our politi-
cal movements is to be slept over or

140 DR. BEECHER'S

despised ? Religion is the most power-
ful, dreadful cause, when perverted,
which ever mingled a malignant influ-
ence in the politics of nations ? But for
the alliance of religion with the state,
and the intrigues and power of the
priesthood, Europe had been for ages
comparatively tranquil, instead of being,
like a volcano, in continued action, or a
ship in battle, in a constant blaze.

How dreadful were the wars of the
Reformation in Europe, and the civil
wars which followed, which could at
any time have been quenched, but that
a perverted religious zeal inflamed them.
The politics of the nation could at any
time have been adjusted, but the religion
never. Far, far from us be the plague of
that burning which will break out and
rage among us as it never raged on
earth, should a perverted religious influ-
ence introduce among us this curse of
nations. For holy as religion is, all the

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 141

bad passions gather about its perverted
standard, and under the sanctions of its
hallowed name, and by all the aug-
mented motives of eternity, let loose the
malignant passion of the desperately
wicked heart.

And let me ask again, whether the
Catholic religion in its union with the
state, has proved itself so unambitious,
meek, and unaspiring — so feeble, and
easy to be entreated, as to justify a
proud contempt of its avowed purpose
and systematic movements to secure an
ascendency in this nation ? Is it acci-
dental that in alliance with despotic
governments, it has swayed a sceptre of
iron, for ten centuries, over nearly one
third of the population of the globe, and
by a death of violence is estimated to
have swept from the earth about sixty-
eight millions of its inhabitants, and
holds now in darkness and bondage
nearly half the civilized world 1

142 DR. BEECHER'S

In all this long career of evil it is
not the personal character of individu-
als which perverted the system and sent
out the results, but the system which
perverted personal character. It was
the energy of an absolute spiritual do-
minion in corrupt alliance with political
despotism — displaying their perverting
power and acting out their own nature.
It is the most skillful, powerful, dreadful
system of corruption to those who wield
it and of debasement and slavery to
those who live under it, which ever
spread darkness and desolation over
the earth.

And yet over all its track of blood
it has thrown the exterior of high devo-
tion, great sanctity, and eminent purity
and benevolence. It boasts a venerable
antiquity, and claims a lineal descent
from primitive Christianity, and blazons
on its roll of fame the names of many
holy and illustrious men. Some of its

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 143

doctrines are true, and some of its in-
stitutions are wise, and the self-denial
and good deeds of some of its clergy
and sisters of charity, in the visitation
of the sick and the education of the
poor, are worthy of imitation. But it
is a religion exclusive in its claims and
awful in its sanctions, and terrific in its
power of declaring sins remitted or re-
tained. By the confessional it searches
the heart, lea-rns the thoughts, and mo-
tives, and habits, and condition of indi-
viduals and families, and thus acquires
the means of an unlimited ascendency
over mind by the united influence of
both worlds. It is majestic and impo-
sing in its ceremonies, dazzling by its
lights and ornaments, vestments and
gorgeous drapery, and fascinating by the
power of music and the breathing mar-
ble and living canvas, and all the di-
versified contributions of art — strong in
the patronage of the great, and the

144 DR. BEECHER'S

power of wealth and the versatilities of
art, and unlimited in its powers of ac-
commodation to the various characters,
tastes, and conditions of men. For the
profound, it has metaphysics and philos-
ophy— the fine arts for men of taste,
and wealth, and fashion — signs and
wonders for the superstitious — forbear-
ance for the sceptic — toleration for the
liberal, who eulogize and aid her cause
— enthusiasm for the ardent — -lenity for
the voluptuous, and severity for the
austere — fanaticism for the excited, and
mysticism for moody musing. For the
formalist, rites and ceremonies — for the
moral, the merit of good works, and for
those who are destitute, the merits of
the saints at accommodating prices —
for the poor, penance — extreme unction
for the dying, and masses for the spirits
in prison, who, by donation, or testa-
ment, or by their friends, provide the
requisite ransom.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 145

This is the religion so powerful in
the combined energies of earth and
heaven— "so dextrous in their applica-
tion— so gigantic in its past energies —
so enslaving and terrible in its recorded
deeds, and yet in its present appearance,
so mild, meek, unassuming, and muni-
ficent, which is coming in among us, a
comparative stranger — the records of
its history denied, or forgotten, or cov-
ered by a charity that would belt the
zones, and span the earth — coming by
numbers to outnumber us, and by votes
to outvote us, and by the competitions
of European munificence to secure aa
ascendant influence in the education of
the young republicans of our nation.

This religion is wielded by a priest-
hood educated, for the most part, in the
despotic governments of Europe, of re-
cent naturalization and retaining the
ecclesiastical and political partialities
of their country and early associations.
13

146 DR. BEECHER'S

Were they allied to us by family and
ties of blood, like the ministry of all
other denominations, there would be
less to be feared, and common interests
would produce gradually but certainly
an unreluctant assimilation. But as it
is, they stand out from society, a sepa-
rate, insulated male ecclesiastical asso-
ciation, with property and interests pe-
culiarly their own; with an irresponsible
and despotic power over the conscien-
ces, and physical and civil action of
numbers, quite too great and influential
for the safety of republican institutions,
where every thing depends on the free
and enlightened action of public senti-
ment.

This anti-republican tendency of
clerical influence is augmented in our
nation, by the fact that the control of
suffrage, and secular patronage, and
education, and power of conscience, is
under the predominant influence of the

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 147

society of Jesuits ; an order of men as-
sociated at the reformation, to stay its
progress, and sustain and extend the
cause of the Papacy — clothed with high
privileges and devoted by oath to im-
plicit obedience to his holiness — possess-
ing the advantages of an efficient or-
ganization, and the energy of a despotic
will, equal to the control of a com-
mander-in-chief over every officer and
private in his army, and wielding the
power which belongs to talent, learning,
wealth, numbers, and a deep knowledge
of human nature, and the means of
touching dextrously every spring of ac-
tion, and securing every complexity of
movement for religious and political
purposes — trained as courtiers, confes-
sors, teachers, diplomatists, saints, spies,
and working men, to influence and con-
trol the destiny of nations, and guided
also by a morality which permits the
end to sanctify the means. An asso-

148 DR. BEECHER'S

elation of more moral and political
power than was ever concentrated on
the earth — twice suppressed as too for-
midable for the crowned despotism of
Europe, and an overmatch for his holi-
ness himself — and twice restored as
indispensable to the waning power of
the holy see. And now with the ad-
vantages of its past mistakes and ex-
perience, this order is in full organiza-
tion, silent, systematized, un watched,
and unresisted action among us, to try
the dexterity of its movements, and the
potency of its power upon unsuspecting,
charitable, credulous republicans.

That the Jesuits will ever regain
their former ascendency is not to be
apprehended ; but is no influence of their
secret organization and intrigue, short
of its former terrific energy, to be
feared ? Was ever a more ample field
for intrigue opened before them than
our country presents, — or more accessi-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 149

ble and unwatched, — or filled with ma-
terials more powerfully adapted to per-
plex the movements of our government,
and make confusion worse confounded 7

Doubtless, the Catholic religion can
never acquire a permanent ascendency
in this nation by force, and a formal
union of church and state ; but a king-
dom or nation divided against itself is
brought to desolation. And is it impos-
sible to embody such an amount of
Catholic influence by copious immigra-
tion, and unity of action, and Jesuit
intrigue, as to divide us 1 Is the task
so impossible, or difficult, as to throw
contempt upon the systematized action
of an order of men, once the most pow-
erful that ever conspired against liberty,
or held competition with despotic pow-
ers ?

Were we all, as Americans and re-
publicans, apprised of the danger, and
united in mild and efficient measures,
13*

150 DR. BEECHER'S

it would still be a subject of deep in-
terest and great difficulty. If none
were indiscreet and violent, and none
sympathized with the Catholics, as
abused and persecuted, and none from
a greater hatred of the Protestant than
the Catholic religion and none from
secular interest, and political favoritism,
sympathized with them, the floods of
unprepared, confiding mind, rolling in
upon us to augment the power of a
Jesuit priesthood, might well awaken
solicitude and demand circumspection.
But who can preclude, in so exciting
and delicate an emergency, all but wise
councils and discreet action, or prevent
the affinities of prejudice, and hate, and
political ambition from gathering nom-
inal Protestants about the Catholic
standard ; and who can abide the day,
should the politics of this nation become
perplexed and infuriated with the viru-
lence of a religious controversy.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 151

It is true that Catholicity in Europe
is on the retreat before the march of
liberal opinions and institutions ; but it
is no less true that it is still, in numbers,
wealth, and political dominion over
mind, a terrible power, and precisely
such an enemy as has often given a
desperate battle; and inspiration teaches
that the dying struggles of this system
will be among the most gigantic and
terrible, and such are the existing prog-
nostics of its destiny.

If^the Catholic religion were simply
an insulated system of religious error,
it might be expected to fade away with-
out a struggle before the augmenting,
overpowering light of truth ; but it has
always been, and still is, a political re-
ligion,— a religion of state; and though
its ambitious encroachments reconciled
the potentates of Europe to its waning
power, the experience of the last thirty
years has taught them, that they have
overacted in the humiliation of his holi-

152 DR. BEECHER'S

ness and the church, that her downfall
opens the door to revolution and the
march of liberty, that the Catholic
church is as indispensable to the throne,
as the throne is to the church, and that
without her influence over mind, they
cannot meet and stem the spirit of the
age ; and now they are beginning, with
new decision, to rally again around the
church, and to give to her their secu-
lar aid, while she repays them by the
energy of her spiritual dominion over
mind. •

Hence it is, that under the auspices
of the Greek church, the emperor of
Russia declares, " as long as I live, I
will oppose a will of iron to the pro-
gress of liberal opinions," and has pre-
scribed to the ill-fated Poles a catechism
in equal quantities of despotism and
blasphemy.

The empire of Austria is also her-
metically sealed against the admission
of light.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 153

A late intelligent American traveler
in Austria, says :

"And what are the people of Austria 1
They are slaves, slaves in body and
mind, whipped and disciplined by priests
to have no opinion of their own, and
taught to consider their emperor their
God. They are the jest and by- word
of the northern Germans, who never
speak of Austrians but with a sneer,
and " as slaves unworthy the name of
Germans ; as slaves both mentally and
physically."*

In accordance with this Austrian
policy of keeping out the light and
maintaining the empire of darkness, his
present holiness, pope Gregory XVI,
lamenting, in 1832, the disorders and
infidelity of the times, says :

" From this polluted fountain of
' Indifference,' flows that absurd and
erroneous doctrine, or rather raving, in
* Dwight,

154 DR. JBEECHER'S

favor and defence of ' liberty of con-
science;' for which most pestilential
error, the course is opened for that en-
tire and wild liberty of opinion, which
is every where attempting the over-
throw of religious and civil institutions ;
and which the unblushing impudence
of some has held forth as an advantage
to religion. Hence that pest, of all others
most to be dreaded in a state, unbri-
dled liberty of opinion, licentiousness of
speech, and a lust of novelty, which,
according to the experience of all ages,
portend the downfall of the most pow-
erful and flourishing empires."

" Hither tends that worst and never
sufficiently to be execrated and detested
LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, for the diffusion
of all manner of writings, which some
so loudly contend for, and so actively
promote."

He complains, too, of the dissemina-
tion of unlicensed books.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 155

" No means must be here omitted,
says Clement XIII.) our predecessor of
happy memory, in the Encyclical Letter
on the proscription of bad books — ' no
means must be here omitted, as the ex-
tremity of the case calls for all our
exertions, to exterminate the fatal pest
which spreads through so many works ;
nor can the materials of error be other-
wise destroyed than by thejlames, which
consume the depraved elements of the
evil.' "

And to aid him in the work of burn-
ing liberal books and crushing the efforts
of patriots to break their chains and
secure liberty, Austrian bayonets are
placed at his disposal.

" In the year 1828 the celebrated
Frederick Schlegel, one of the most
distinguished literary men of Europe,
delivered lectures at Vienna on the
Philosophy of History, (which have not
been translated into English,) a great

DR. BEECHER'S

object of which is to show the mutual
support which Popery and Monarchy
derive from each other. He commends
the two systems in connection as de-
serving of universal reception. He at-
tempts to prove that sciences, and arts,
and all the pursuits of man as an intel-
lectual being, are best promoted under
this perfect system of church and state ;
a Pope at the head of the former ; an
Emperor at the head of the latter. He
contrasts with this, the system of Pro-
testantism ; represents Protestantism as
the enemy of good government, as the
ally of Republicanism, as the parent
of the distresses of Europe, as the cause
of all the disorders with which legiti-
mate governments are afflicted. In the
close of lecture 17th, vol. ii. p. 286, he
thus speaks of this country : ' The TRUE
NURSERY of all these destructive princi-
ples, the REVOLUTIONARY SCHOOL for

France and the rest of Europe, has been

PLEA FOR THE WEST.

NORTH AMERICA. Thence the evil has
spread over many other lands, either by
natural contagion, or by arbitrary com-

" But who is Frederick Schlegel ?
He may be a great scholar, but what is
his situation that so much weight is to
be attached to his opinions 1 I will
give my readers a brief account of
him, abridged from the Encyclopedia
Americana, (edited by a German) suf-
ficient to enable them to judge if too
much stress is laid upon his opinions.
: Frederick Schlegel, (one of the great
literary stars of Germany) went over
to the Catholic faith, at Cologne, and
in the year 1800 repaired to Vienna.
In 1809 he received an appointment at
the head quarters of Arch Duke Charles,
where he drew up several powerful
proclamations. When peace was con-
cluded, he again delivered lectures in
Vienna on modern History and the
14

158 DR. BEECHER'S

literature of all nations. In 1812, he
published the German Museum, and
gained the confidence of Prince Metter-
nich by various diplomatic papers, in
consequence of ivhich he was appointed
Austrian counsellor of legation at the
diet in Frankfort. In 1818 he returned
to Vienna, where he lived as SECRE-
TARY OF THE COURT and COUNSELLOR OF
LEGATION, and published a view of the
Present Political relations [of Austria]
and his complete works.' In 1828 he
delivered his lectures on the Philosophy
of History, in which his views as I have
stated them are fully developed.

" This is the man whose opinions on
the relation of Popery and Monarchy,
and Protestantism and Republicanism,
and of the influence of the United
States, have been followed by the ac-
tion of the Austrians, in the formation
of the St. Leopold foundation. He was.
part and parcel of the government ; he

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 159

Was ONE OF THE AUSTRIAN CABINET,
THE CONFIDENTIAL COUNSELLOR OF PRINCE
METTERNICH.''*

It is doubtless in the exertion of this
plan of resuscitating the Catholic reli-
gion on account of its political subser-
viency to the thrones of Europe, that
St. Domingo is coming into remem-
brance, and that efforts are making to
establish in that island the spiritual
dominion of a Catholic priesthood ; and
that in all the South American conti-
nent the cause of liberty is on the wane,
before the united influence of military
chieftains and the Catholic priesthood.

All the signs of the times indicate
the coming on of that next European
conflict of which prophetic Canning
spoke, as long and dreadful, a war of
opinion — a war of liberty against des-
potism, and which is to terminate in the

* Preface to " Foreign Conspiracy" — pages 17,
18, and 19.

160 DR. BEECHER'S

emancipation or hopeless bondage of
the world.

In this view of the subject, the
Catholicity of this nation, and its rapid
increase, cannot be safely regarded as
a mere insulated religion, but rather as
one department of a comprehensive ef-
fort to maintain despotic government
against the march of free institutions,
by an invigorated union of ecclesiasti-
cal and political power ; and though the
Catholics among us may, as a body, be
unapprized of this policy, and ought not
to be reviled, or denounced, or falsely
accused, or assailed by rumor, and in-
vidious epithets, neither are they to be
unwatched, or entrusted with the edu-
cation of the nation, or the balance of
her suffrage.

No opinion is more unfounded or
pernicious than the one so often ex-
pressed, that the Catholic church stands
on the same foundation, in respect to

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 161

its republican tendencies, with all the
other religious denominations in our
land. There is no denomination but
the Catholic which acknowledges im-
plicit subjection to the spiritual domin-
ion of a foreign prince in whom the
church and state are united, and whose
political relations modify, by the in-
trigues of the European powers, his
ecclesiastical decisions — a prince de-
pendent on the protection, and under
the control of one of the most despotic
governments of Europe. There is no
church but the Catholic in our land
which claims infallibility, and the right
of a universal spiritual jurisdiction, and
makes heresy a capital offence, punish-
able with political disfranchisement and
with torture and death — none whose
clergy are chiefly foreigners, dependent
for investiture, and honor, and support,*

* The bishop of Kentucky, writing to Europe,
says : " Generally, we ought to consider all the

14*

162 DR. BEECHER'S

on a foreign jurisdiction, and whose
most active correspondence, and strong-
est sympathies, and most powerful mo-
tives of action, lie abroad and cluster
about thrones, and dominions, and prin-
cipalities, and powers, adverse to our
institutions — none which claims and
exercises the right of inhibiting the
reading of the Bible but with express
permission of a priest, and denounces
the right of private interpretation, and
inculcates, wholly, the obligation of
believing implicitly as popes and coun-
cils have believed. There is in this
country, beside the Catholic, no denom-
ination, any principles of whose religion
are anti-republican, or whose influen-
tial officers denounce republican insti-

bishoprics of America as sees destitute of all re-
sources, which can never be solidly established
unless, for half a century, they are aided by rich
and pious souls in Europe." — Quarterly Register,
vol. 2. p. 196.

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 163

tutions, free inquiry, and the liberty of
the press, as they have been denounced
by the reigning pope, and opposed by
Catholic potentates of Europe — none
which makes the confidential confes-
sion of sin to a priest indispensable to
forgiveness, or claims the right of selling
indulgences for sins past, or to come —
of selling prayers for the deliverance of
souls from purgatory — none whose in-
terests are in the hands of a secret as-
sociation of men, bound by oath to
obey, implicitly, his holiness in the pro-
pagation of the Catholic religion — the
most powerful secret organization that
ever existed, and now sustained by the
royal munificence of European Catho-
lics, and occupied in rearing powerful
institutions for the education of our sons
and daughters. There is in this country
no religion but the Catholic which
claims the right of interfering with the
political affairs of nations by the inter-

164 DR. BEECHER'S

position of ecclesiastical authority, re-
leasing subjects from their oaths of alle-
giance, and putting down and setting
up the powers that be, or who have
manifested a desire, or commenced the
attempt, by the exclusion of lay trus-
tees, to secure all church property in
ecclesiastical hands.

Among the deliberations of the late
Catholic convention, at Baltimore, they
say, in their European correspondence,
that one subject of consideration was,

" What is necessary to be done in
regard to trustees, and the means of re-
pressing their pretensions ? It is known
what disputes and scandals have arisen
on this subject, and, it may be said, it
is one of the greatest scourges of the
church in the United States ; and one
of the priests, writing to a mutual friend
in Europe, says : ' The bishop has the
happiness of governing his churches
without church wardens. By this me-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 165

thod you see we are at peace, although
without help. Were we to establish
them, they might be very useful to us ;
but we should fear schisms and dissen-
sions; of all evils the greatest despo-
tism exercised against the pastors, and
division and disorder in many other
churches, assure us fully of this. Better
then is poverty and dependence on the
charity of the faithful, than tyranny.' "*

The desire seems here to be avowed
of securing the entire property of the
Catholic church in the United States,
by some means, in the hands of the
clergy, regarding the inspection and in-
fluence of lay trustees, even though
Catholics, as tending to schisms, despo-
tism against the pastors, and constitu-
ting one of the greatest scourges of the
church.

But it 'is said the Catholic religion
is not what it used to be, the claims and

* Quarterly Register, vol. 3. pp. 91 and 96.

166 DR. BBECHER'S

dogmas, and bigotry, and persecuting
maxims, and superstitions of the Catho-
lic church have passed away. She has
felt the spirit of the age, and yielded to
its demands, and henceforth, and espe-
cially in this country, we have to anti-
cipate only a revised and corrected edi-
tion of the Catholic church.

As republicans and Christians, we
certainly hail the day when the Catho-
lic church shall be reformed, and we are
not reluctant to believe, on proper evi-
dence, that the Catholics of this country
perceive and renounce the past unscrip-
tural and anti-republican claims, max-
ims, and deeds of the church of Rome.
We only desire that their professions
and disclaimers should not be received
in evidence that the Roman church is
reformed, till the same authority which
enacted her erroneous maxims and au-
thorized the unchristian conduct, has
conceded her fallibility and repealed

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 167

the criminal decisions of her popes and
councils, and professed repentance for
her evil deeds, and made proclamation
that she admits her members to rights of
conscience, and free inquiry, and civil
liberty ; but so long as the infallibility
of the church is claimed, and all her
maxims remain unrepealed, and are
rigidly enforced wherever the march
of liberal opinions has not compelled a
relaxation. Such disclaimers can be
regarded only as evidence of what ne-
cessity extorts and expediency dictates,
and the accommodating policy of the
church has always permitted to her
loyal sons.

Who is it then that makes the pro-
clamation, that the Catholic Church
has discovered her mistakes in past
ages and is reformed 1 Has the pope
announced it 1 Has the general council
decreed it 1 Has the Catholic conven-
tion at Baltimore placed it upon their

168 DR. BEECHER'S

records ? Has a single Catholic bishop
or priest admitted or claimed that the
Catholic church has been, by the proper
authorities, revised and corrected in any
material point of doctrine, discipline, or
practice. Not one — and no Catholic
will say it, who has any character to
Jose, or frowns to fear from superior
power.

The church cannot be reformed as a
church only by the pope and a general
council. The question of revision and
change is therefore simply a matter of
historical fact. When, where, and in
what respect^, has the pope and a gene-
ral council changed the claims, maxims,
doctrines, or established usages of the
church ? When and where has it been
decreed that liberty of conscience, and
civil liberty, are the birth-right of man
— that reading the Bible is the right of
man and not a privilege to be conferred
— that private interpretation is the duty

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 169

of man instead of implicit confidence in
the exposition of others — that persecu-
tion for conscience sake is tyranny, and
the deeds of the inquisition an abomina-
tion in the sight of God. What one of
her maxims, avowed centuries ago, has
she expunged and does not rather en-
force to the present hour at Rome and
Vienna ? What are the powerful prin-
ciples of collision which now agitate
Europe and South America but those of
civil liberty and despotic power 7 And
on which side, when uncoerced, is his
holiness, and his cardinals, and bishops,
and priesthood ? Every where in Por-
tugal, in Spain, in France, and in Italy,
and South America, on the side of mo-
narchical, and in opposition to liberal
institutions.

But we have documentary evidence
which settles the questions. The fol-
lowing is from a treatise by M. Aignan,
of the French Academy, the second edi-
15

170 DR. BEECHER'S

tkm of which was published at Paris in
1818.

" Passing to the 10th article of the
Concordat, in which it is said that His
Most Christian Majesty shall employ,
in concert with the Holy Father, all the
means in his power to cause to cease, as
soon as possible, all the disorders and
obstacles which obstruct the welfare of
religion, and the execution of the laws
of the church — were [the Protestants]
to ask, (although the profuse shedding
of their blood might have informed
them,) ' what are the laws of the
church?' the acts of Pius VII. himself,
and the writings on which the church
rests her authority would answer, THE

EXTERMINATION OF HERETICS, THE CONFIS-
CATION OF THEIR GOODS, AND THEIR PRIVA-
TION OF EVERY CIVIL PRIVILEGE." To

this the author subjoins in a note :
" Certain portions of real estate, which
had belonged to ecclesiastics,had passed

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 171

into the hands of Protestant princes.
Pius VII. in 1805, complained of it to
his nuncio residing at Vienna ; and re-
minded him that, according to the laws
of the church, not only could not heretics
possess ecclesiastical property, but that
also they could not possess any pro-
perty whatever, since the crime of heresy
ought to be punished by the confiscation
of goods. He added, that the subjects
of a prince, who is a heretic, should be
released from every duty to him, freed
from all obligation and all homage.
c In truth,' said he, ' we have fallen on
times so calamitous, and so humiliating
to the spouse of Jesus Christ, that it is
not possible for her to practise, nor ex-
pedient to recall so holy maxims ; and
she is forced to interrupt the course of
her just severities against the enemies of
the faith. But if she cannot exercise
her right to depose the partisans of
heresy from their principalities, and

172 DR. BEECHER'S

declare that they have forfeited all
their goods ; can she ever permit that,
to enrich themselves, they should de-
spoil her of her own proper dominions 1
What a subject of derision would she
not present to these very heretics and
unbelievers, who, while they insulted
her grief, would say they had discovered
the method of rendering her tolerant V

" The same pontiff, in his instructions
to his agents in Poland, given in 1808,
professes this doctrine, that the laws of
the church do not recognize any civil
privileges as belonging to persons not
Catholic; that their marriages are not
valid ; that they can live only in concubi-
nage ; that their children, being bastards,
are incapacitated to inherit; that the
Catholics themselves are not validly
married, except they are united accord-
ing to the rules prescribed by the court
of Rome ; and that, when they are mar-
ried according to these rules, their mar-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 173

riage is valid, had they, in other respects,
infringed all the laws of their country"*
The present pontiff declares that
" From this polluted fountain of ' In-
difference/ flows that absurd and erro-
neous doctrine, or rather raving, in favor
and defence of ' liberty of conscience ;'
from which most pestilential error, the
course is opened for that entire and
wild liberty of opinion, which is every
where attempting the overthrow of reli-
gious and civil institutions ; and which
the unblushing impudence of some has
held forth as an advantage to religion.
Hence, that pest, of all others most to be
dreaded in a state, unbridled liberty of
opinion, licentiousness of speech, and -a
lust of novelty, which, according to the
experience of all ages, portend the down-
fall of the most powerful and flourishing
empires."

* Quarterly Register, vol. 3, page 89.
15*

174 DR. BEECHER'S

" Hither tends that worst and never
sufficiently to be execrated and detested
LIBERTY OP THE PRESS, for the diffusion
of all manner of writings, which some
so loudly contend for, and so actively
promote."

He complains, too, of the dissemina-
tion of unlicensed books.

" No means must be here omitted,"
says Clement XIII., our predecessor of
happy memory, in the Encyclical Let-
ter on the proscription of bad books —
" no means must be here omitted, as the
extremity of the case calls for all our
exertions, to exterminate the fatal pest
which spreads through so many works;
nor can the materials of error be other-
wise destroyed than by the flames, which
consume the depraved elements of the
evil."

To the question, " What is to be
done 1" I would say a few things to
obviate misapprehension, and indicate

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 175

what would seem to be the plain prac-
tical course.

In the first place, while the language
of indiscriminate discourtesy towards
immigrants, calculated to wound their
feelings, and cast odium on respectable
and industrious foreigners, is carefully
to be avoided ; an immediate and ener-
getic supervision of our government is
demanded to check the influx of immi-
grant paupers, thrown upon our shores
by the governments of Europe, corrupt-
ing our morals, quadrupling our taxa-
tion, and endangering the peace of our
cities, and of our nation.

It is equally plain, also, that while
we admit the population of Europe to
a participation in the blessings of our
institutions and ample territory, it is
both our right and duty so to regulate
the influx and the conditions of natu-
ralization, that the increase shall not
outrun the possibility of intellectual and

176 DR. BEECHER'S

moral culture, and the unregulated ac-
tion of the European population bring
down destruction on ourselves and
them. In what manner the means of
self-preservation shall be applied, it
does not belong to my province to say.
Doubtless a perfect remedy may be
difficult, perhaps impossible ; but should
we therefore look upon the appalling
scene in pale amazement and trembling
impotency ? It would be the consum-
mation of infatuation, and the precursor
of ruin. Nothing is impracticable for
the preservation of our liberty and na-
tional prosperity ivhich ought to be done,
and nothing can ruin us but presump-
tuous negligence or faintness of heart.
But we must act, and act quickly, and
with decision, or the stream will be too
deep and mighty to be regulated, and
will undermine foundations and sweep
away landmarks, and roll the tide of
desolation over us. Nor can the pa-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 177

triotic solicitude of the people, and the
states, and the nation, be brought to
bear on this subject, immediately, to
the extent of our political wisdom and
practical energy, and not mitigate the
evil, and avert the danger. But our
past utter neglect on this subject, is as
wonderful as the carefulness of the
nations of the continent. Not an indi-
vidual from this country can traverse
Europe without the inspection of a host
of spies and police agents, who make
his person, character, and business, as
well known to the government as they
are known to himself, and no small
portion of this vigilance is for the pur-
pose of precluding the, possibility of any
political republican action, adverse to
their institutions. While we, around
the entire circumference of our nation,
leave wide opened the door of entrance,
and all the vital energies of our institu-
tions, accessible to any influence which

178 DR. BEECHER'S

the anti-republican governments of Eu-
rope may choose to thrust in upon us.
Do these governments indulge a vain
fear in thus environing the political in-
fluence of Americans, though only tem-
porary residents, and even wayfaring
men? And have we nothing to appre-
hend while European paupers flood us,
and Europeans occupy the soil, rear
institutions, wield the press, control
suffrage, and rush up rapidly to a^com-
petition of numbers ? Is our government
so compact and iron-sinewed as to bid
defiance, safely, to every possible dis-
turbing influence from abroad, which
can be made to bear upon it 7 Ought
there not to be a governmental super-
vision of the subject of immigration,
which shall place before the nation,
annually, the number and general cha-
racter of immigrants, that the whole
subject may experience the animadver-
sion of an enlightened public sentiment,

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 179

and the voice of the people aid in the
application of the remedy?

We entered upon the experiment of
self-government, when a homogenous
people, with diffidence, and multiplied
checks, and balances in our constitution,
and have watched and encountered,
with decision and care, the dangers de-
veloped in the progress of its adminis-
tration ; but why should there be such
vigilance to guard our institutions from
domestic perils, and such reckless impro-
vidence in exposing them, unwatched,
to the most powerful adverse influence
which can be brought to bear upon
them from abroad?

In respect to the Catholic religion,
and its political bearings, there is an
obvious and safe course. It is the me-
dium between denunciation and impli-
cit confidence, between persecution and
indiscriminate charity. It includes a
thorough knowledge of the principles,

DR. BEECHER'S

history, and present conduct of the
papal church, where its power is unob-
structed. To this end, a book is emi-
nently needed, containing the authentic

documents of the Catholic church, ac-

*

cessible to ministers and intelligent lay-
men of all denominations. These now
are scattered through massy folios, or
quoted in versatile discussions, and
cannot be readily appealed to or con-
sulted. A book of well authenticated
documents, without note or comment,
would nearly supersede the necessity
of controversy, and afford ample mate-
rial for public sentiment to act upon,
which, while it would not encroach
on the rights of Catholics, would, by
no means, confide to their care the
education of large and influential por-
tions of our republic. A book of this
description would not be invidious.
If the Catholic system does not con-
tain principles and usages adverse to

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 181

free institutions, it would clear it of un-
merited odium ; and if it does contain
such principles it is the right and duty
of the nation to know it. There is
nothing in Catholic more than in Pro-
testant human nature, to demand im-
plicit confidence, or preclude investiga-
tion and vigilance. No denomination
of Christians, and no class of politi-
cians, are so good as to justify implicit
confidence, or supersede the necessity
of being watched. Responsibility to an
enlightened public sentiment is the only
effectual guarantee of unperverted lib-
erty and political prosperity.

But to a correct and universal obser-
vation must be added efficient universal
action, to rear up, immediately, those
institutions, literary and religious, which
are indispensable to the intellectual and
moral culture of the nation. Our own
population is fast outrunning the influ-
ence of Christian and literary institu-
16

182 DR. BEECHER'S

tions ; and if to us republicans it seems
evil to supply them — if it grieves us to
encounter the expense of maintaining
the discipline which is necessary to the
perpetuity of government in our way,
we have no cause to complain that the
powers of Europe should extend to us
a gratuitous education, which shall en-
able them to avert the annoyance of our
example, and govern us their way. If
we do not provide the schools which
are requisite for the cheap and effectual
education of the children of the nation,
it is perfectly certain that the Catholic
powers of Europe intend to make up
the deficiency, and there is no reason
to doubt that they will do it, until by
immigration and Catholic education we
become to such an extent a Catholic
nation, that, with their peculiar power
of acting as one body, they will become
the predominant power of the nation,
or if not predominant, sufficient to em-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 183

barrass our republican movements, by
the easy access and powerful action of
foreign influence and intrigue. We
have no right to complain that the Cath-
olics of this country, aided from Europe,
should seek to accomplish a work
which we neglect, — and we do not com-
plain either of his holiness of Rome or
of his majesty of Austria, or his wily
minister Metternich. They pursue the
policy in supplying our deficiency of ed-
ucation, which, with their views of right
and self-preservation, they ought to
pursue, and the Catholics in this coun-
try have a perfect right to gather funds
from Europe to purchase lands — rear ca-
thedrals— multiply churches — and sus-
tain immigrant ministers, and to sustain
the unendowed bishoprics for fifty years
to come, and establish nunneries, and
support the sisterhood, and establish
cheap and even gratuitous education
amid all the destitute portions of our

184

land. They have a right to do it. and.
according to their principles, they ought
to do it, and they are doing it, and they
will do it, unless as a nation of repub-
licans, jealous of our liberties, and
prompt to sustain them by a thorough
intellectual and religious culture as
.well as by the sword, we arise, all de-
nominations and all political parties,
to the work of national education.

" The sole object of this argument
touching the Catholics is not to repu-
didate them, but to present the facts in
the case, and appeal to the nation,
whether it will sustain its own institu-
tions for the education of its own peo-
ple, or depend on the charity of the
Catholic despotic governments of Eu-
rope. I do it because when the facts
are stated, and the eye of the nation is
fixed on the subject, unless infatuation
has fastened on us, there can be no
doubt of the result. Education, intel-

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 185

lectual and religious, is the point on
which turns our destiny, of terrestrial
glory and power, or of shame and ever-
lasting contempt, and short is the period
of our probation. Indolence and neglect
will soon extend over the land the la-
mentation, " The harvest is past, the
summer is ended, and we are not saved."
The things which belong to our peace
are now before our eyes, and our suf-
ficiency to secure them is vast and man-
ifold. As a nation we are disincum-
bered of debt, and from our perilous
resources might at once make provi-
sions to endow forever the colleges,
academies, and schools of the land.
Each state, alone, is able to endow its
own institutions, and were all legisla-
tive provision withheld, there are in the
nation individuals of sufficient wealth
and patriotism, and munificence, when
they perceive the perils and the safe-
guards of our liberty, to call into being
16*

186

DR. BEECHER S

all those orbs of light which are indis-
pensable to the safety and perpetuity
of our institutions. And were even
those unmindful of their privilege and
duty, a republican phalanx, such as
once fought the battles and paid the
taxes of the revolutionary war, would
now command institutions for the de-
fence of liberty to arise, as their fathers
did the forts and munitions of their
day. Every denomination would or-
ganize its willing multitude to give and
toil till intelligence and holiness should
cover the land as the waters cover the
sea. But this various and superabun-
dant ability and willingness of the na-
tion must be called forth in plans of
peaceable efficacy — the means must be
multiplied of providing and sustaining
the requisite host of qualified instruc-
tors. Institutions, male and female,
must be endowed to secure cheaply, the
requisite qualification. The national

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 187

intellect and morals, will never rise to
the exigencies of our preservation, ac-
cidentally, or spring up under the hand
of ephemeral and inexperienced instruc-
tors. The early culture of the national
intellect, and heart, is worthy of becom-
ing' a profession, and must become a
profession, in the hands of duly quali-
fied men and women — embracing the
experience of the past, and the accu-
mulating knowledge of coming gener-
ations. The education of the nation —
the culture of its intellect — the forma-
tion of its conscience, and the regula-
tion of its affection, heart, and action,
is of all others the most important
work, and demands the supervision of
persons, of wise and understanding
hearts — consecrated to the work, and
supported and highly honored in ac-
cordance with their self-denying, disin-
terested, and indispensable labors. It
is here that we faulter, and that the

188 DR. BEECHER'S

Catholic powers are determined to take
advantage of our halting — by thrusting
in professional instructors and under-
bidding us in the cheapness of education
— calculating that for a morsel of meat
we shall sell our birth-right. Ameri-
cans, republicans, Christians, can you,
will you, for a moment, permit your free
institutions, blood bought, to be placed
in jeopardy, for want of the requisite
intellectual and moral culture.

One thing more only demands at-
tention, and that is the extension of
such intellectual culture, and evangeli-
cal light to the Catholic population, as
will supercede implicit confidence, and
enable and incline them to read, and
think, and act for themselves. They
are not to be regarded as conspirators
against our liberties, their system com-
mits its designs and higher movements,
like the control of an army, to a few
governing minds, while the body of the

PLEA FOR THE WEST. 189

people may be occupied in their execu-
tion, unconscious of their tendency. I
am aware of the difficulty of access,
but kindness and perseverance can ac-
complish any thing, and wherever the
urgency of the necessity shall put in re-
quisition the benevolent energy of this
Christian nation — the work under the
auspices of heaven will be done.

It is a cheering fact, also, that the
nation is waking up — a blind and in-
discriminate charity is giving place to
sober observation, and a Christian feel-
ing and language towards Catholics is
taking the place of that which was
petulant, and exceptionable. There is
rapidly extending a just estimate of
danger. Multitudes who till recently
regarded all notices of alarm as without
foundation, are now beginning to view
the subject correctly, both in respect to
the reality of the danger, and the means
which are necessary to avert it. and

190 PLEA FOR THE WEST.

both the religious and the political pa-
pers are beginning to lay aside the
language of asperity and to speak the
words of truth and soberness. Under
such auspices we commit the subject to
the guardianship of heaven, and the
intelligent instrumentality of our be-
loved country.

X <